The Iron Curse
by Nesiy Lemon
Summary: Ginny stumbles upon some bracelets that seem to call her, one goes into her wrist, the other finds its way into one Lord Voldemort, locking their destinies together with a curse.
1. Chapter 1

**A/N:** Sorry to everyone that have read this last year, but I finally decided what to make with it and I am publishing it again (English still isn't my first language, sorry). It's not going to be big, but it's going to be fun. I think. Enjoy and leave some thoughts, ok?

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They ran, they ran as fast as they could but it was not enough. The Death Eaters were catching up with them, and they're still far away from the damn exit of the Department of Mysteries.

How Ginny hated that place, it had been there were her first battle against the Death Eaters had happened, it was the place where Sirius Black had died and taken a part of Harry with him.

She and zero good memories about it.

Ginny wasn't able to run for much longer, her side was aching and her lungs were begging her to stop and breath, so that was what she did while watching her teammates disappear in the corner of the nearest shelf in the Hall of Prophecies as she pressed her back against the wood behind her, breathing hard.

How did they even get themselves in this mess? They worked for the Ministry! Their department was four floors above this! They had completely failed as Aurors, and she really hoped that she would not get fired because of someone else's stupid, horrible and dumb mistake.

While she was still, with her face as red as her hair, trying to catch her breath, she noticed the door across from her and suddenly she couldn't move her eyes away from it. It was kind of hidden away behind an old tapestry and it completely grabbed her attention, Ginny even stopped listening to the Death Eaters' screams that were fast approaching her position, because the most important thing for her, in that moment, was that door.

She crossed the short distance between them and grabbed the tapestry, pulling it away from the door. There wasn't anything special about the it, but for some reason, it called her, and Ginny wasn't able to resist its music. She opened the door and peeked inside, afraid to see something she shouldn't or find someone waiting to attack her, but the small room without windows was empty.

In the middle of the room a deep red coloured pillow rested atop a stone pedestal and resting on top of the pillow were two bracelets of a silver like material, reflecting the light that passed through the door behind her. Ginny walked towards them, calmly and almost hypnotized, her eyes fixed on them like the whole Universe only contained her, those two pieces of jewellery and nothing else.

She was almost touching one of them when she heard screams practically outside, not exactly near her position, but not as far as they should been for her safety, so Ginny simply grabbed the bracelets and run as fast as she could while putting them on her pocket.

After a while Ginny found her teammates, she was back to that horrible room with the Archway, an ominous presence that seemed to look down at them from its platform, its veil moving without any wind.

It was has disturbing has Ginny remembered it.

Running her eyes through the room she spotted Harry near the steps of the platform and her hearth stopped.

One of the first things Harry had done when he became an Auror was to research that archway, to understand how could Sirius disappear through it and never return. It turned out that it was a one-way path to the world of the dead, where anyone could just walk in and, well, die. Most of the times it wouldn't be some voluntarily suicide but a faceless murder, because the dead relatives of the unfortunate soul that walked to near to it would call to him, ask him to join them in the other side.

It was, for most people, something very hard to resist.

Ginny run to Harry and stopped in front of him, grabbing his head in between her hands and pulled him for a kiss. "Don't do something stupid..." She muttered against his lips, feeling relieved when he pulled her against him.

"I won't, don't worry." He answered before kissing her again.

Harry suddenly pushed her behind him and put an arm in front of her.

Ginny quickly understood way.

Lord Voldemort slowly walked from behind the Archway in all of his cadaveric glory, roaming the room with his horrible red eyes, grabbing part of the veil with his long white fingers, playing with death like it was nothing to worry about.

"We meet again Harry..." He greeted him in his emotionless voice.

"So we do." Answered Harry, stepping back to put some distance between them and their enemy.

"You're surrounded, tell me Harry, is this the day when you will finally die?" Asked Voldemort smiling cruelly at them, a question whose answer he already knew.

"No, today is not the day." Answered Harry with a coy smile in his lips. When he lifted his wand Ginny stepped back, away from him, not knowing she was going to do it for the last time in her life.

Harry fought Lord Voldemort the best he could, he used the most powerful spells and curses he knew, but it was not enough and he fell to the cold floor, dead, while Voldemort laugh, victorious, being applauded by his Death Eaters.

Time stopped for Ginny in that moment, she couldn't believe what her eyes saw, her heart was breaking, exploding in millions of pieces that left her empty inside. She run to Harry, not carrying about the Death Eaters or Voldemort himself, she threw herself over Harry's body and Apparated, feeling spells fly all around her the moment she disappeared.

She appeared right in the middle of The Burrow's kitchen, clinging to Harry's body, wishing she was dead as well, screaming, crying and cursing the world and all the gods she had ever heard of, she blamed them, but above all, she felt a hate like she never felt grew inside her against Voldemort.

She wished them all dead.

The day went on in a flash, her mother did not had the courage to make her release Harry's body, so she called the rest of her family, she called Harry's friends, and everyone waited for her to stop crying, to stop rocking his body against hers and caressing his hair.

When she eventually did, they took Harry back to the Ministry of Magic where Voldemort was waiting for it, patient, kind of comprehensive towards their need of say goodbye, since he intended to give the body to the Archway as a way of being sure Harry would never come back.

Ginny was there when they gave him the body, when he showed the world what he had done, that he had nothing else stopping his plans.

She didn't listen to his speech.

She didn't heard one word of what he said, of the promises he made about the future, and she ignored everyone around her.

She was to numb.

She had to expel her mother from her bedroom that night, Molly was afraid to leave her alone, but Ginny craved the loneliness of the night, she needed to start thinking about what happened.

Ginny dropped her cloak in the armchair and sat on the bed, feeling something punch against her leg, she took the bracelet off her pocket.

Looking through her other pockets for the second bracelet she gave up when she couldn't find it, but it was something so insignificant, she didn't give it a second thought. Ginny slide the bracelet up her hand and looked at it on her wrist, thinking that it felt more like iron then silver, twisting it around, it had a simple design, with no decorations or inscriptions.

She wished that life was as simple as this bracelet looked, everything would be so much better.

She let herself fall back in to the bed, not bothering to change her clothes, and pulled her blanket up curling in it, crying until sleep came to claim her.

Ginny's dreams that night were just a succession of nightmares, she saw Harry die over and over again, and she would wake up each time it happened, but at a certain point of the night, she stopped dreaming about Harry and started dreaming about Lord Voldemort, not quite him in fact, but the Horcrux in the diary.

She dreamed of the first time he had pulled her in to its pages.

He had told her that it would be just a memory he had saved there, that she would not be able to speak with him and he would not be able to even know she was there, so she would have to peer over his shoulder to look at the book he was reading in the memory and that he wanted to show her to help her with the Potions homework.

Her heart had almost stopped when the young Voldemort from the diary, Tom Riddle, had suddenly turned back to look at something behind her. She didn't know who he was back then, but she had been really impressed by his looks that first time she saw him.

She woke in that moment, feeling confused by what her subconscious had decided to show her, and suddenly feeling sick she run in to the bathroom down the hall.

Ginny only dreamt about Harry's death that first night, the ones after that were all full of her memories from her first year that she had buried in the deepest part of her mind and never looked back at.

All her dreams were about Tom Riddle, the Horcrux of the wizard that had killed the love of her life.

She was starting to be afraid of sleeping.

After the first week, Ginny asked her boss to go back to work, but he refused, he had told her that despite the fact that he understood her need to work and be busy as a way to cope with grief, the Ministry of Magic was not safe for her to return. Lord Voldemort was changing everything there and was now the temporary Minister of Magic, at least until he decided about what kind of government he was going to implement in long term. He had also asked about the Auror that had taken Harry's body, and they were trying to calm him down with that before telling him who she was.

Not having much to do with her free time, she started to understand why she dreamed about Tom Riddle, he had after all, almost killed her back in the Chamber, and now his other self, his older and snake alike self, had actually managed to kill part of her when he killed Harry, so this was her brain's way of dealing with it.

It made perfect sense, there was no other explanation for his constant presence.

What she didn't understood about her dreams, was why she was noticing things she had never seen before about him, that the things she remembered the most about those dreams were his looks. The way he walked, his smile, the way he looked at her with those blue eyes; she even dreamed about the way he had hold her close to him in when he had almost killed her and instead of feeling afraid, instead of being assaulted by the horror of having her soul sucked out of her body, all she could think about was the way his hands had pressed against her back and the feeling of his cheek against hers.

It was freaking her out, and she was slowly going mad. Even during the day, she passed more time thinking about him then grieving Harry, and it was making her feel like she was some kind of horrible person.

A monster.

By the end of the first month of Harry's death, she was authorized to go back to work. Lord Voldemort had left Lucius Malfoy in charge of the Ministry in his absence, and Lucius didn't care about the small Ginevra Weasley that had stolen Harry Potter's body from his Master's feet. Weeks went by, fast and horrible because since the Death Eaters were no longer the enemy and Lord Voldemort was in charge, the Aurors had to turn to their friends, to the ones that did not accept their new ruler.

To the everlasting resistance of the Order of the Phoenix.

The day Ginny decided she couldn't deal with hunting down her friends to send them to Azkaban, was the day Lord Voldemort returned, deciding to assume the command as some kind of absolutist king, but still using the title of Minister of Magic. She had been, with her hood up to cover her red hair, against the wall near the stage from where he had given his speech about the New Order. He had spoken at the Ministry's lobby, while the statues that symbolized the harmony between wizards and magical creatures were being taken down, the photos were a horrible sight to see when she looked at them the next day in the newspaper.

She didn't dare to look at him during the whole ordeal, she despised him too much, hated him too much and there was no amount of weird dreams that would ever change that.

Ginny started to walk away when he was done, her eyes grounded to the floor, when she felt the urge to look back. Voldemort was looking at her, frowning as much as his strange face allowed him to and titling his head to the side, curious, and Ginny couldn't look away, she hold her breath when he completely turn to look at her, absently hearing what one of his Death Eaters was saying to him.

Ginny only broke their gaze when she felt a burning sensation on her wrist, and whatever had happened in that moment, stopped, and she walked away, rubbing her skin and looking at the red mark her bracelet and left on her.

She thought nothing of it, not a single time, Ginny had a resignation letter to write, and no space in her mind to weird bracelets.

Another month went by and the dreams persisted, Tom was always present during her nights, Ginny even started to drink some tea made of special herds to prevent her of having dreams, but it was to no avail, he was still there. It got to a point where she was starting to wish he would be real and actually able to touch her, and those thoughts scared her more than the dreams alone.

Then, there was that morning when her life was turned upside down, she woke up earlier than usual and feeling like something huge was about to happen. She hurried with her shower, didn't eat her breakfast, and just stood by door to the garden, looking through the window and obsessively rolling the bracelet in her wrist. Waiting. Her family had tried to make her eat, to make her sit down with them at the table, but Ginny didn't move, when they asked what was going on with her she couldn't say what it was.

Her family was finishing breakfast when she suddenly opened the door and stopped on the doorframe, and they were completely shocked when a man put his arms around her and pulled her to a kiss, clinging to her like his life depended on it.

Ginny had been waiting all those days for him, and she didn't even know why. All she knew was that she needed to touch him, to feel his skin against hers, to have him in her arms and never let go.

She suddenly came in to her senses and gave several steps back, looking at him with such horror in her face when she looked back at her family, that she made everyone in the table behind her stand up.

He was older then in her dreams, he was dressed differently, his black clothes were too big and didn't fit as they should, but she could never mistake him for someone else, she had just kissed Tom Riddle, and that was impossible because the Horcrux had been destroyed and Lord Voldemort looked more like his snake Nagini then… this. Ginny felt her back hit the table and stopped, covering her mouth with her hands, not knowing what to say or even think, completely confused.

He waited for his Death Eaters to settle beside him to speak.

"Well… now that I've taken this out of my chest…" He said, with a deeper voice then she remembered, looking at her with an intensity she didn't expect to see on those icy blue eyes. "I would like to know exactly who you are and why I can't stop thinking about you." He said rubbing his wrist, calling her attention to the bracelet between his fingers, the one she had found in the Department of Mysteries and lost, the one that matched her own.

"I also hope you can explain to me, why I look like I'm 20 years since I certainly didn't go to sleep last night looking like this, and I can't find any reason for it to happen but your sudden imposing presence in my life." Said Lord Voldemort while running a hand through his black hair.


	2. Chapter 2

Ginny couldn't find the strength to stand any longer so she let herself slid down to the floor, breathing hard, processing what she was seeing and what she had just done, more then that, what he had done.

It was freaking her out.

"There is no need to bow." Voldemort said with a smile on his lips, looking amused at Ginny that had bent forward to rest her head on the floor and was covering it with her hands, mortified. "I don't bite, well, at least until I know what's going on... Nott, where are we exactly? This place feels kind of familiar but I don't remember from where."

"This is the Weasley family's house, my lord." Said the wizard at his side, looking weirdly at his master, it was unusual, Lord Voldemort always knew everything.

"The Weasley family? The blood traitors?" He seemed genuinely surprised. "Well then... and their names are?" He asked without looking at Nott, focused on turning the bracelet on his wrist.

"Well, not everyone is here, but I recognize the George and Fred that have that shop at the Diagon Alley, Percy and his father, Arthur, both of them work in the Ministry, Molly and the surviving elements of the Golden Trio, Ronald and his mudblood girlfriend, Hermione." He said with acid tripping from his voice when he mentioned Hermione's name.

"I didn't expect more from this family... and this one?" Voldemort asked, pointing at Ginny with his boot.

"That's Potter's girlfriend, Ginevra."

"Hmm... So Ginevra, any idea about what brought me here?" He asked looking coldly at Hermione that was holding on to Ron but eyeing defiantly the wizard that killed one of her best friends.

"Yes..." Ginny whispered from the floor.

"What did you say?" Asked Voldemort leaning forward and putting his hands on his pockets, signalling to the Death Eaters to surround the Weasleys and make them sit back on their chairs. Ginny didn't repeat what she had said, so he crouched in front of her. "Do not make me ask again, girl." He demanded, coldly.

Ginny suddenly rose to her knees and tightly grabbed his right wrist, pushing him back and forcing him to sit on the floor. "It's this damn bracelets." She shouted, making him look at her with his mouth half open, surprised at her audacity and stupidity.

"How do you dar-" He began, angry that she dared touch him and make him fall, but before he could finish Ginny shook her arm un front of his face making their bracelets shake. "Wha-" He frowned and pulled her closer to him, making her kneel between his legs, none of them aware of how close they were and how odd their sudden comfort was to everyone that was watching them.

"Oh yes... I see what you mean." Voldemort said comparing the two bracelets and sighing tired, as if he was used to these situations every day. He tried to take off his bracelet but it would not pass his hand, Ginny tried to do the same and got the same result. Voldemort looked at her with a smile and the air of someone who was running out of patience. "I hate coincidences... where did you found these things?" He asked.

"In the Hall of Prophecies." Said Ginny holding Voldemort's wrist and trying to remove his bracelet, hoping it would come off if she was the one trying. "There was a door to an adjacent room in one of the walls, behind a tapestry and I don't know why, it called me. When your _friends_ started to close on my position I just grabbed the bracelets, put them on my pocket and ran... At night when I returned home, I only had one in my pocket, I don't know where the other one may have fallen." Said Ginny with a faltering tone.

"Well, I know, when you took Potter's body... it was you right?" He asked pulling a strand of her hair, pausing to wait for her response, admiring the red colour.

"Yes." Ginny said dryly.

"As I stopped by where his body was, this bracelet was in the floor." He said, turning his bracelet on his wrist. "But it's funny... I remember putting it on, but I don't quite remember wearing it, and I think it's the first time I try to take it off..." He tried to remove it again but to no avail. "There seems to be some kind of spell… Nott, you have been with me most of the days since we took control of the Ministry, what have I been doing with this bracelet?" He asked without looking at the wizard, holding Ginny's hand to try to remove her bracelet the same way she had done to him.

"You never took it off sir, and if you were not holding something you would be turning the bracelet, sir. Everyone noticed it… it has been quite odd…" Nott said, hesitating to share his, and his fellow Death Eaters's thoughts about their Master's behaviour towards the bracelet.

"I haven't noticed it as well..." Commented Ginny.

"I've never seen anything like this, but I am sure that, whatever it is, it's connecting us in some way." Voldemort looked at her straight in the eyes, unsure if he should ask her what he was thinking or not. He decided to go ahead with it.

"You don't say…" Ginny grunted before she could stop herself.

"Have you been thinking about me? Dreamed, perhaps?" His logical side tacking control, trying to break the problem in to smaller pieces that he could understand.

Ginny looked at him in surprise, but then her face hardened and she closed her lips tightly together in a thin line. "Yes, I began to dream about you on the night Harry died."

"Ah... then it must have been around the time when I put the bracelet on..." Voldemort said more to himself than to her.

"Has it been the same with you?" Asked Ginny, not really wanting to know the answer he would give her, afraid of his words.

"Yes." Voldemort laughed, but with no happiness in his tone. "It has been extremely inopportune and takes away from my mental space, one that should be devoted to my plans to kill a good portion of the Muggles in this country." He smiled cruelly when Ginny looked startled at him. "But today, today was a different day because first, I woke up looking like this. You won't be able to understand my surprise when I sat in my usual chair at the top of the table and everyone was looking at me like I was crazy and started to point their wands at me. I had to torture some of them to make them believe it was me. It has been 40 years or so since the last time I saw this face." He laughed, amused at what he was saying, pulling a lock of Ginny's hair again and playing with it between his fingers.

"At the same time I had to ensure them that I was, in fact, the same person, I was dealing with the horrible feeling that I had something to do, that there was someone waiting for me..." Voldemort dropped Ginny's hair to slide a finger down her jaw line. "I'm not a big fan of demonstrations of affection," He lowered his voice, a mutter that only she could hear. "I despise being touched, so our kiss just now was too…" He stopped trying to find the word, turning the hair between his fingers as if that helped him think. "Unnatural..."

"I agree... there's something weird going on." Ginny paused as Voldemort closed some of the distance between them, approaching his face from hers. "I would never do this from my own will, I hat-" Ginny became quieter has he leaned closer, stopping when his lips touched hers.

"Ginny!" Shouted Ron and Hermione at that time.

Ginny pushed Voldemort back and stood up, getting away from him, cleaning her lips with the back of her hand. Voldemort also stood up and straightened his cape over his shoulders, shaking his head.

"What the hell are you doing?" She screamed at him. "You just said-"

"I know what I just did!" He shouted back and sighed trying to calm himself.

"I think we have to go talk to Tiberius in the Department of Mysteries." He said looking at Ginny and putting his hands behind his back for a moment. "Since you got this bracelets from there, as the director, he should know what is going on." Voldemort approached Ginny and grabbed her arm, pulling her close to him, he then looked at his men. "Take the mudblood to Azkaban." Then he dragged Ginny to the garden and in to the path outside the property away from the protective spells that surrounded the land, where he put an arm around her waist and Apparated, not giving her time to react to what he had done to her friend.

They Apparated at the Ministry of Magic's lobby and Voldemort had to drag her through the halls as she struggled to break free from his hold, demanding that they went back, that he took back his order to take Hermione away. But Voldemort ignored her and only stopped when they reached the doors of the Department of Mysteries.

"Will you shut up?" He asked in a threatening tone that scared her in to silence.

Voldemort forced Ginny to show him where she had found the bracelets, which made them walk for a while on the Hall of Prophecies. The long corridors made of shelves filled with spheres that emitted a bluish and ghostly light looked all the same, that and the fact that Ginny had not been taking attention were she was running was not helping her sense of direction. Voldemort was practically snorting beside her, mumbling something indecipherable whenever she changed direction.

When they finally reached the room where Ginny found the bracelets, Voldemort was the first in, circling the pedestal in the centre of the room, looking around to try to feel some kind of spell placed there, he carefully watched the pedestal, raised the pillows where the bracelets had rested during who knew how long and walked back to stand beside Ginny. "Let's go find Tiberius."

Voldemort guided her to the office of the Department of Mysteries director and entered without knocking, startling the other wizard.

Tiberius was a wizard already in his 70's, tall and thin, with most of his brown hair turned white. When Voldemort stood at the front of his desk, his eyebrows almost disappeared in his scalp and he slowly stood up.

"Tom Riddle?" He said, uncertain, confused by what he was seeing.

"It's Voldemort now." He corrected sharply, letting himself fall into one of the two chairs in front of the desk, Ginny sat on the other, leaning on the edge ready to run away as soon as possible.

Tiberius sat back on his, slowly, looking at both of them, trying to figure out what was going on. "Well, how can I help?" He eventually asked.

"On the day I killed Potter, this girlfriend of his stole these bracelets from the Hall of Prophecies." He said annoyed, raising his arm so the other wizard could see the bracelet on his wrist. "Somehow, one ended up with me and the other ended up on my new friend here." Ginny raised her arm to show him the bracelet and Tiberius motioned her to lay her hand on the desk so he could see it better.

"You're in a deep problem my dear." Tiberius said, putting his glasses back. "If I remember correctly these bracelets were forged by Goblins several centuries ago for two families who wanted to force their children in to marriage, they hated each other and their families did not want them to have a loveless marriage. They wanted them to mate, to bond for the rest of their lives, and these bracelets forced them in exactly that." Tiberius looked from Ginny to Voldemort and then down to the pile of paper on his desk. "They force two people to fall in love by making them be close to each other until they fall in love and bond. "

"What do you mean with _fall in love_?" Ginny asked leaning forward, feeling her heart skip a couple of beats.

Tiberius held up a hand to calm her down.

"When the bond was created the two were able to remove the bracelets and they gave them to the Ministry, if anyone else needed them… and they were requested sometimes until it was decided that it was a cruel practice and they were transferred to this Department to be studied since it's the only know way to force two people in to love."

"But why did she found them in the Hall of Prophecies? There are so many other places where they could be stored, safer places." Said Voldemort, doing his best to ignore all he was saying about love and bonds and other ridiculous things that he hated.

"Well, originally they were not there, but a few decades ago a prophecy was made around them and we decided to move them there." Said Tiberius.

"What prophecy?" Asked Voldemort.

"I have no idea! I never heard it, and it was destroyed the first time you visited us! "Tiberius said in an accusing tone.

Voldemort covered his eyes with one hand taking a deep breath. "What about the archive where the prophecies are transcribed?" He asked.

"One of your friends burned it on the same occasion of your previous visit."

Ginny heard Voldemort mutter something under his breath, but she didn't care for what it was. "Can't you tell us anything else about this?"

"I need some time to search our records, no one has noticed the absence of the bracelets so we are going to need time." Tiberius said.

Ginny was going to ask another question but gave up, if he didn't know, he didn't know.

"I am going home…" She got up and crossed the office towards the door, she looked back for a moment, both wizards were looking at her.

"I will let you know of anything I find as soon as I can. I respect Arthur too much for letting you get hurt in this curse." Tiberius rose from his seat, worried.

"Thank you." Ginny closed the door on her back, for a moment she had expected Voldemort to come after her, but he did not, he stayed in his chair, staring at her with those awful blue eyes making her feel disgusted, regretting her lack of control for letting him touch her the way he had done, even if she couldn't have done anything to avoid it. After all, it was the bracelet in her wrist responsible for it, such a tiny thing, with so much power.

Ginny crossed the Ministry, her feet knowing where to take her, taking her to passages that Harry had showed them once upon a time, a way of avoiding people, a corner to find a kiss between their tasks.

She entered her old ward, her old colleagues becoming silent as she passes them.

They knew.

They knew what had happen between Voldemort and her that morning, that he had gone to see her. She hurried, feeling unsafe and not understanding why.

Hermione was in communal cell, it was overcrowded with the findings of the night, but soon they would be sent to Azkaban.

"Ginny!" Her friend screamed, pushing the other prisoners out of the way to reach the bars and extended her arms to her.

"I am going to take you out of here!" Ginny hold her hands against her chest. "I swear!"

"What happened in that kitchen?" Hermione asked in distress, ignoring her words.

"I swear I am going to take you home." Ginny stepped back, she didn't know what had happen in that kitchen, she didn't even understand what had actually happen in Tiberius' office. She turned and walked away, almost running to the foyer, not wanting anything else then reach a fireplace and get back home, but when she finally did it, she hesitated. She couldn't go home and face her family. Ginny felt the Floo dust start to run through her fingers as she thought, where should she go? Where should she hide for the night?


	3. Chapter 3

Harry's house was empty and the furniture was starting to collect dust when she arrived. She hadn't been there since the night before he died, leaving all her things behind.

Her heart tightened, the sight of hit pained her and she couldn't bare see it like this.

Ginny walked to the kitchen and sat down, breathing deeply and trying to ignore what had happen in those few hours. She looked around the dark division, not knowing what to do, if she should eat, if she should clean, if she should die under the overwhelming misery she was feeling.

She went with the second option, she needed something physical, something easy to focus that would keep her busy during the rest of the day and that would send her into a dreamless sleep away from her problems at night.

Ginny felt bed as she swiped the floor of the hallway. She should go back to the Ministry of Magic and find Voldemort, make him release Hermione at that very moment and return with her to The Burrow.

She gave a deep breath when the image of her friend more worried with her than with the fact that she was about to be sent to Azkaban for something that was out of her control crossed her mind again.

She had no idea how to actually help her.

She should go home and tell her parents that she was well and that they shouldn't worry about what had happen, that Voldemort was never going to cross their door again, but she couldn't find the strength to do that or even make that promise.

Not after what had happened between them.

She let the broom fall and leant against the wall beside the portrait of Sirius' mother for a moment, catching her breath and feeling the acids of her empty stomach rise to her mouth.

It was not her fault, she said to herself over and over again, but it did nothing to help her calm down. She was also starting to think about Harry, he had died just some weeks ago and she was already… she gave a deep breath and got the broom from the floor.

She had to keep going.

It was not her fault.

She stopped for lunch but was not able to eat anything, putting the warm food she had just cooked away for later, for when she could actually stomach it. That was the last thing she remembered doing as after what felt like an instant she woke up in St. Mungo with Voldemort sleeping quietly on a bed to her right.

She sat down slowly, pulling her hair behind her ears and slowly looking away from him to observe the rest of the room.

By her side was Tiberius, the old director of the Department of Mysteries, watching her with sorry in his eyes and with a finger in front of his lips telling her to speak lowly. He didn't want to disturb the other occupant of the room.

"Let him sleep," he said, "he barely sleeps and it will do him good, he is going to need to be well rested to deal with what is going on."

"What happened?" Ginny muttered, trying to keep herself calm.

"Our new Prime Minister," Tiberius pointed to Voldemort in the other bed with his reading glasses, "missed an appointment in the afternoon and Lucius Malfoy went after his master to see if he was in need of help with whatever business was keeping him away. He entered his office and found him completely unconscious and was not able to wake him up. The Death Eaters brought him here since they thought it could be related to his sudden change of appearance and when his heartbeat started to drop they brought me.

I thought about your situation and supposed that you would also going through the same.

Ginevra, you have no idea how worry we were when we couldn't find you, it took us over half an hour to track you down to the Black's house. He was getting worse so fast that we thought we would not reach you in time."

"What do you mean?" Asked Ginny, she had a feeling for what he was about to say but didn't want to hear it.

"I haven't had the time to track down any records regarding the bracelets, I didn't know this was going to happen, but it looks like that the spell on them is now fully activated. I think the bracelets give the couple the opportunity to get close by themselves, a kind of silent ultimatum before actually forcing you to be together."

"What do you mean with that?" Ginny closed her finger over the blanket off her bed into a fist.

"I don't think you two can be away from each other for long amounts of time." Tiberius concluded with raised eyebrows and a look of pity.

"W-what?"

"I created a team to search for any information we might have about the bracelets, they are working right now…"

"What do you mean with we can't be long periods of time apart?" She asked interrupting him, insisting, she was certainly not understanding something, it couldn't be like that.

"I am sorry Ginny, but you will have to be at least in the same building as him for most of your time, I think you two can only be away for four hours maximum."

"How do you know it's that amount of time?"

"I spoke with the Death Eaters, it seems that between the time he woke up looking like that and going to see you, it was not even two hours. Then we have the time when you left my office and the one Malfoy found him unconscious, which was a little over four hours."

"What am I going to do?" Ginny leant against the pillows again, incredulous.

"You are going to stay strong as we find a way to remove the bracelets from you. We can't really make any decision without him," Tiberius pointed to Voldemort, "I would prefer you would both stay here in the hospital, but I doubt he will want anything similar to do that."

"Where are my parents?"she asked, "what do they think?"

"The Death Eaters didn't allow them to be on the premises; they are at home, waiting for me to let them know how things are going on here, if you are well."

"I don't even know what to say…" Ginny covered her eyes with her arm. "I want to ask you if you are sure, if you know anything else, but I am sorry, it's just… I… I am sorry… But are you sure? Are you sure about this?"

"I am as sure as one can be in my situation." He replied. "I am really sorry." He rose from his chair and look down to her. "Try to rest as well, you went through the same as he did." He started to walk to the door but turned back under the doorframe to look at Ginny. "You both almost died and it's normal for you to be awake."

Ginny saw him go, in silence, absorbing how serious her situation actually was, what was at stake.

She rose and pulled the chair where Tiberius had sat to the side of Voldemort's bed. She didn't want to sleep more, she wanted to just stay there in silence, looking at him and try to think about what she was going to do.

From time to time a nurse would enter the bedroom and check on them, check if Ginny needed something, but she could see she was doing it more out of her own curiosity, of wanting to be the first outside the small circle of people that knew what had happened that morning and the deep problem they were in with those bracelets, to know what was going on between the Dark Lord and Harry Potter's girlfriend.

Ginny ignored her, not moving when she knocked, focused on the quietness of she was sure to be a private ward and the rhythmical breathing of the wizard in the bed in front of her.

She felt the tears start to run down her face as the feelings of betrayal started to rise again, the ones that she had silently fought during the summer after the events in the Chamber of the Secrets. She always regretted feeling like that, but she guessed it was her way of mourning the loss of a close friend, even if she had only been eleven.

Now she had to face him again, not the one she had grown to hate, the one that killed Harry.

"You're sad." His hoarse voice startled her, making her look at him.

"You woke up because you felt I was sad?" She asked without thinking.

"Well, aren't we feeling like a special snowflake?" He asked with sarcasm, looking away from her. "I woke up with the annoying sound of you stomping your foot on the floor, I was asleep, not dead… What I want to know is what Tiberius told you. The fact that you are still here, watching me sleep like some kind of creep, is already bad news." He changed the subject without giving her time to think of a comeback. "What happened?"

"It's only fair if I watch you sleep as well." She replied under her breath, regretting immediately opening her mouth.

Voldemort immediately sat on his bed and Ginny rose from the chair, sitting on the bed.

"What is that supposed to mean?"

Ginny sighed and stood up, she didn't want that lurking nurse to know more than they did and went to close the door.

"Tom," he raised an elegant eyebrow at the sound of the name his father gave him, but she ignored him and slowly told him what Tiberius said to her.

"I see…" He muttered, looking down at his hands observing them with care, closing and opening them as is he hadn't done that gesture in decades.

It was, in fact, decades since the last time he had seen those hands, they had started to deform some months after he killed Hephzibah Smith and created the Horcrux in Slytherin's locket. His body collapsing from the lack of a proper soul living inside.

He couldn't phantom why he looked like this again, he didn't like to have this body back and found it quite odd to the changing on his appearance to be the moment zero for the activation of the bracelets.

"I guess I am stuck with you now." He said pulling his blankets apart and putting his feet on the floor. "We have to go, I have work to do and I don't really have the time to deal with this at the moment." He said looking around for his boots.

"Where are you going to take me?" Ginny asked, watching him look around, finding it slightly amused. She must be going through some kind of steps program because she was clearly having a change of mood, she was starting to feel like laughing and to do it for hours and hours on end.

She knew that if she did that she would probably get quite a bit hurt by the time he made her stop, so she didn't even start.

He looked at her annoyed as if sensing her change of humour as well.

In a couple of steps, he was in front of her, grabbing her by her arms and pulling her to her feet, in the next moment they were in a dimly lighted bedroom. With a wave of his had the curtains opened and Ginny blinked several times to the sudden light.

"I will be back later, don't leave this bedroom." He warned her, turning and walking to the door.

"What if I do?"

"You don't want to know, Weasley."

Ginny didn't reply to that, she simply focused on his bare feet as he closed the door behind his back.

It was, indeed, very funny, and she laughed until she started to cry.


	4. Chapter 4

Ginny hadn't dared to leave, she wanted, but she took him very seriously and was not going to risk doing anything rushed.

She had opened every door and every drawer she could find, she had slept for an hour when she had felt faint at a certain point, probably because Voldemort had left her general vicinity, and then she spent the rest of the time staring at the fire.

She had no idea where he had brought her and honestly, she didn't care, she just wanted to speak with him, see if he knew anything new, what he wanted to do, and go home for some time.

No more, no less.

She didn't want to speak with anyone but him, see anyone but him, hear anyone else speak but him, and that was not the bracelet speaking, she really despised being in the situation she found herself in and the less people knew about it, the better. She even hoped no one knew she was in that bedroom but by the food that had just arrived, someone was on par with her presence in the house and in charge of tending to her basic needs.

She sat back down on the armchair and stared at the food. She was not hungry and she was half sure the food was poisoned. It was a stupid thing to think as it was obvious they connection was deep enough for their own health to be affected by each other wellbeing.

Ginny stood up in that very moment, open mouth as the most terrible, horrible and despicable idea she had ever had downed on her, making her almost smile.

She took the knife from the tray and sat back down in the armchair, she hoped she was right, because it was going to hurt.

She positioned the tip of the knife on the back of her right hand and started to cut, as deep as she could handle it, grinning in pain at the blood that was starting to drip from her hand to the carpet on the floor.

It hurt more then it looked like it was going to hurt.

She took a deep breath and listened for any sign of him, looking around the room for any glimpse of the most fearful Dark Wizard of the century.

The knife returned to her hand and she started to cut again, as slowly and deep as she could.

With a loud pop he was there, grabbing her wrist tightly enough to hurt her if it wasn't for the fact that it was not tightly enough to overpower the pain in her hand.

" . ?" He asked in a low, controlled voice to which she replied with a courageous smile, finding strength from somewhere deep inside or just unable to react as she should to his demeanour.

How could she take him serious when he was looking like that?

"Testing a theory," she took her hand away from him with a jerk, "it worked." Smiling at the sight of the red blood running down the back of his hand to the cuff of his coat.

"If you do this ever again, I wi-" She stopped him there.

"You will what?" she asked with a board smile in her lips. "What are you going to do to me? Put a Curciatus on me and you will follow me to the ground! Kill me? Well, I want to see you try that again." Ginny's smile got even bigger as Voldemort simply stood there looking at her with a frown.

"What do you want?" He asked, taking the napkin from under the fork in the tray and cleaning the blood from his hand before folding it and pressing it done against the cut, observing with curiosity as her own blood stopped running from her hound.

Ginny knew what she wanted, but she decided to squirm this new found control over him to do something actually useful.

"I want you to take Hermione from Azkaban and send her home."

Voldemort rose an eyebrow at her in confusion and let his arms fall, dropping the stained napkin over her food, to put his hand in his pockets. Ginny started to worry whit the time he was taking to reply, fearing that he had done something to her friend. A thousand thoughts run through her mind, none of them good or pleasant. What would she say to Ron if something had happened to Hermione?

He was still watching her and she couldn't bare it anymore. "Well?" She blunted.

"I have no idea of who you are talking about," he said with a tired sigh, "is she a mudblood? I did spend a lot of my day going through some files of those…" he hesitated, trying to find the right word to describe them.

"The woman in my house this morning!" Ginny didn't let him continue, she was in no mood to have her friend insulted.

He didn't reply again, she could see he was just pretending to think, he knew who Hermione was as well as she. Who didn't?

"Well?" She asked, giving a step in his direction.

"Well what?" He rolled his eyes with a chuckle of disdain. "The law is clear, resistance criminals are arrested on sight, mudblood resistance criminals are sent to Azkaban to enjoy the company of the Dementors for the rest of their lives, mudbloods of her degree, that were compared to me, to what I achieved at Hogwarts, well," he smiled and turned to look at the fire, clasping his hands behind his back, "those are up to special affection from one lucky prison guard."

"No! What is wrong with you!?" She raised her voice.

"What is wrong with me?" He chuckled. "I am doing this for you!"

"WHAT?" She screamed, unable to comprehend what he had just said.

"I want you to walk in a world free of impurity and ugliness." He looked at her over his shoulder. "You should be grateful; I am ensuring your blood will remain pure, that your children will live in a safe world."

"I don't fucking care about your fucking theories, Tom! I want you to release Hermione at this very instant or-" This time it was Voldemort's turn to stop her, he gave a step in her direction and smiled.

"Well, you will do what?" He tilted his head, no longer smiling, his face blank without a sign of a single emotion, not even the curiosity that seemed to be in his question.

Ginny put her hand over the fireplace, flat against the wall, feeling the warmth from the chimney under her skin. She looks at him and then at her hand, positioning the knife over the centre of the back of her hand, aiming for the muscle between the bones.

"I swear I will do it!" She warned him. "Tell me you will release Hermione and let her go home." He didn't reply, he simply stared back at her, almost amused.

She took the knife back and stabbed the knife on the wall over her hand, letting herself lean forward and rest her head against her forearm.

"Are you done being childish?" He asked, sitting down in one of the armchairs, ignored her chuckle in fake amusement. "Sit down."

"I want to go home." She ignored him, leaning her back against the decorated frame of the heart. "Where did you bring me, Tom?"

"Do not address me in that way." He looked at her with a warning in his blue eyes and grabbed the glass of wine from the tray and crossing his legs.

"I don't care, get used to it." she looked across the room, "You will always be Tom for me."

"Do you know Occlumency?"

"No."

"Hmm." It was not the first time he had tried to read her mind, but he couldn't reach her no matter what information he tried to pursue. She was a closed book, a pillar of silence in darkness in a world open to him, where he had killed the wizards that could hide for him.

It was probably the bracelets, of course, what else could it be.

He wanted to know what she meant with that, it gave him the impression of her knowing something he didn't know.

He tried to avoid thinking about the problem he had left in that room in the morning, trying to ignore what was going on and focusing on work. It had been productive, he had an iron will and was able to ignore intrusive thoughts regarding anything to do with her, but when he left the house, the Minister of Magic's accommodations where he had his secondary office to attend a meeting in the Ministry, he started to feel unease.

He had not told anyone of her presence there, he didn't want anyone to know, he told himself it was something related to the fact that one of the domestic elfs could find her, that someone could hear the little beasts talk.

He had returned when he started to feel sick, he was too busy to faint and waste hours of his day in Saint Mungo again, still he drank his coffee mixed with a generous amount of firewhiskey and continued to work.

Dinner came but he sent his plate up to her, not feeling hungry at all. At the same time a letter from Tiberius arrived, it was a thick envelope that radiated a bad omen and he unreasonably tried to delay opening it by focusing on other letters, on other paperwork.

He rose to his fit, stunned, when the cut started to appear in the back of his hand, deep and painful, blood immediately starting to flow.

The surprise quickly turned into rage and he Apparated into her room in the moment she was drawing another cut on her hand, just in time to stop her.

With a wave of his hand Tiberius' letter appeared between his fingers and he tore the seal apart, taking the sheets out. He didn't look at her again, reading in silence Tiberius's words, removing the clip from the corner, rolling it between his fingers.

"What are you doing?" He heard her ask, but he didn't reply, ignoring her. "Tom?"

"Don't call me Tom." He told her, making her click her though as a sign of her patience running out, still he didn't look up.

The sound of her Apparating away made him finally look up. How did she dare?

A warm sensation on his forearm told him that he was needed with urgency, which couldn't have come in worse time. He folded Tiberius letters and put it inside his pocket before going to Lucius call.

The wizard, looking disconcertingly older and more mature than him in his 40's then he now looked in his early 20's.

"My lord, we have had a problem in Azkaban," he said anxiously, "a prisoner was taken not an hour ago."

"A prisoner?" Voldemort quickly searched his memory for any wizards powerful enough to do be able to escape the Dementors and the wizard guards he had places there to manage the creatures.

There wasn't anyone.

"We don't know yet." Malfoy said.

"WHAT?"

"Whoever he is didn't do it alone, sir." Malfoy unfolded an Azkaban's map in front of them with a wave of his wand. "They just entered the prison by the front door, opened as many cells as they could and took one, leaving the other prisoners behind to help each other's."

"Why was I not told before?" Voldemort asked grabbing the map and throwing it to the floor in a sudden fury.

"W-we-"Lucius was taken aback by his reaction, a bit unusual as Voldemort, after killing Harry Potter, was no longer so given to sudden fits of rage, but did not had the time to explain that the guards had spent the time trying to control the situation and only now had the time to send someone to report on what had happen.

He quickly followed his master through the fireplace and emerged on the other side to the Azkaban's director office. He crossed the trashed division, over a broken chair, the obvious work of his Master's fury and run down the corridor.

A loud explosion made him lean against a wall, trying to catch his heavy breathing and try to hear the sounds of the battle, where the explosion had happened.

The silence lasted another moment before the screams started and Lucius slated for it.

He came to an abrupt stop when he saw Voldemort with his back against the door bars that closed the ward from where the sound was coming. He had blood on his face and looked annoyed.

Malfoy look over his shoulder, the ward had been restored, there were bodies on the floor, some of the Dementors were standing in front of open cells and he could hear the faith sound of crying under the screams.

"I am feeling merciful tonight, Lucius." The dark wizard said, touching his cheek with two fingers and lowering his hand to look at the tick red blood on his fingertips. "I didn't kill them all."

"My lord…"

"Send the director to his office, I will be there waiting to speak with him." He said walking away, drops of blood staining the floor as he walked down the hallway. "I want to know who was taken."

It took Malfoy almost half an hour to find the director, the middle-aged man looked stressed behind any reason and like the last thing he wanted to do was to explain to Lord Voldemort a situation he barely understood himself.

Malfoy didn't ask, he was not the one in charge of security, that was Nott's job and since he didn't like the man that much, he would do nothing to help him climb out of the hole of problems he was just put in.

When they arrived to the office was empty, there was blood on the floor and the pot of Floo powder was all over the ground. Malfoy closed his lips in a thin line, he was more hurt that he though.

"What happened to the Minister?" Malfoy asked the director in an assertive tone. "How did he got hurt?"

"I am unaware, Mr Malfoy." The other wizard replied, cleaning his office with a spell, observing as his table flew to his usual place, holding one chair as it passed beside him and putting it down to be able to sit. "I was where you found me, I have not witnessed anything."

Malfoy threw some of the Floo powder into the flames, bracing himself to the work that was coming the moment he stepped on Voldemort's office, but once he did, there was only more blood there and no sign of him.

He traced the blood trail to Voldemort's desk and frowned at the open drawers, he stepped closer and started to roam through them, trying to understand what he was looking for and if he had taken anything with him. He moved quickly and efficiently until he stopped in a small drawer full of small glass containers.

Potions.

He took a couple of them off and read the labels, it was mostly healing aids.

Malfoy looked around the room in confusion, why would he take the potions and disappear to heal himself?


	5. Chapter 5

Ginny woke to the feeling of warm breath against the back of her neck and a heavy arm around her waist. At first, she felt comfortable, she was warm, the room had the right amount of light coming in from the thin window across the room due to heavy rain outside and his body fitted well against hers even if it was over the covers.

She turned, eyes closed, sliding her arm under his neck to pull him closer to her and buried her face in the curve of his neck, breathing deeply. Harry's smell always changed to something deeper and violent after he spent the night at work and she loved it.

Slowly, she opened her eyes, it was not right, the hands sliding around her back were not touching her as they were supposed to be and then, Ginny remembered that Harry was dead.

She sat on the bed, slipping away from this man's arm to a safer distance, making him growl something she didn't understand and turn on his back to hide his face with his arm.

"What are you doing here?" She asked, leaving the bed and running to her trousers that were resting on a chair almost across the room.

"Please don't do that…" Voldemort muttered, slowly sitting down and looking at her with only one eye open. "I have this most horrible headache…"

"How did you get here?"

Voldemort took a look around, assessing the place where he was. He didn't remember getting there, but it seemed like he was in one of the bedrooms over the Leaky Cauldron and not one of the good ones by the greyish layer of dust in the curtains.

"I am sorry, don't take this the wrong way but… can you tell me your name again?" He asked, confused, half a smile trying to look friendly.

"You don't know my name?" Ginny looked back at him in disbelief. "If you're trying to be funny, I am not impressed."

"I am not, I really don't remember." He said again, having a good look at her, with her long red hair, and a massive blood stain on her tank top over her stomach. "What happened with all that blood?"

"Tom… you are actually starting to scare me, what's going on?" Ginny was starting to worry, Voldemort was unpredictable, but this was another level.

"You know my name…"

"Yes! Of course I know your name! What is going on here?" She cut him there, as she was starting to get exasperated.

"I don't know what is going on, I simply asked for your name!" He replied back, shaking his head with a frown.

She didn't reply.

"Right…" He looked at her again with a raised eyebrow and stood up, rubbing the back of his neck and running his hands through his hair. "I don't usually drink myself into this state and wake up in a bedroom over here with a strange woman." He smiled at her amused, smiling even more at her open mouth. "Don't look at me like that, you're making me feel like I did something I shouldn't."

Ginny sat down, crossing her fingers over her lap and looked back at him. "I am hearing the strangest words coming out of Lord Voldemort's mouth." She said in utter disbelief, starting to feel like she had woken in a parallel dimension of some sort.

They stared at each other for a moment that seemed to drag and drag and drag.

"My name is Tom, you got it right the first time." He finally said, an amused smile on his lips. "I never heard about that Lord Voldemort…"

"What happened last night after I left?"

"I am sorry?" He looked at her confused.

Ginny crossed the small distance between them and hold his face between her hands, looking him straight in his eyes, trying to see something that could explain his state, but his eyes looked normal and with no sign of anything going through his system.

"What is you name again?" He asked, touching the side of her stomach and feeling the dried blood under his fingers.

"What did you do last night?" She asked, stepping away from him.

"What I did?" He repeated, resting his hand on his stomach and feeling the dried blood on his clothes. He looked down, opening his arms for a moment before lifting his shirt to touch his stomach, but there was nothing there. He was starting to get worried as well, it really was not usual for him to get black out drunk and forget half of the night.

What did he actually remembered?

"Did you do something to me?" His stance changed abruptly, he no longer looked friendly, he had stopped being amused.

"You must be joking!" Ginny gave a dry laugh and turned her back to him trying to find the rest of her clothes.

Tom scratched his check and sat down on the bed, pulling his shirt to see the dried blood again. His shirt had an actual hole in it. He gave another look to his surrounding and spotted the glass vials in the bedside table, stretching he took them from the scratched surface and read the labels.

They were both healing potions, nothing that could actually explain what was happening.

He took a deep breath, clearing his mind and trying to control the pulsating pain over his temple.

He remembered closing the store where he worked, the Borgin & Burkes, organising the work for the next day and going up to the attic of the store, where he lived, to change to more informal clothes. When he was done he left to the Leaky Cauldron, he had agreed with Abraxas Malfoy to meet him there for a pint as he had some affairs to solve in the Ministry later that night for his father.

He remembered sitting down with his drink and the newspaper but didn't remember anything else after that, not Malfoy, not this girl, nothing.

He turned, grabbed the covers of the bed and got up, pulling them down.

The sheets were a mess of blood.

"What the hell happened!?" He stepped away from the bed, looking for his sweater, but the only clothes he found were a vest, a coat and a cape, it was not what he had dressed last night. "What have you done!" He crossed the room in Ginny's direction but stopped when she pointed her wand at him.

"Don't come any closer in that state." She warned. "I don't know everything that happened last night but I expected you to leave after you fixed it."

"What did I fix?" He asked giving a step back and sigh.

"You got hurt and almost got us both killed." She pointed her wand at the blood stain in his shirt making him touch it again.

"You're lying." He walked to her, grabbing her hand and pulling it up over her head. "What are you hiding? Wh-" He looked suspiciously at her.

"Don't bother, you can't use Legilimency at me." She tried to pull her arm from his grasp but he didn't release her.

"Tell me your name!" He demanded, pulling her arm further up making her rise to her toes.

"I swear, Tom. This is not funny!" She put an arm over her shoulder, it was starting to hurt.

"Just tell me your bloody name…" He repeated, slowly.

"Ginevra Weasley." She finally said. "Why can't you remember?"

"A Weasley?" He let her go and stepped back turning his back to her. "I didn't know any of those boys had married." She heard him muttered and frowned, turning the bracelet in her wrist with a bad feeling.

"What are you going to do today?" She asked, holding her breath.

He turned around, looking confused by her question. "Today? He ran his hand through his hair again, trying to remember what he had to do that day. He looked around and spotted a clock, seeing it was half past nine in the morning. "I am late for what I have to do today!" He turned again and hurried to the side of the bed where he had put the rest of the clothes he seemed to be using now, making sure that the vest covered the blood on his shirt before putting the coat on. "Get dressed, you're coming with me."

"I am not going anywhere!" She stated. "It's not saf-" She dropped silent when he pointed his wand at her, ion the next moment her clothes were rubbing against her, asking her to move so that they could slid where they belonged.

Next thing Ginny knew he was pulling her out of the bedroom by the arm. They crossed the hallway and walked down the four flights of stairs to the pub. Ginny couldn't avoid a sound of surprise as he pulled from colliding against a Death Eater that looked as surprised by seeing them together as she was, but before he could react, stop his master, Tom had pulled her to the small backyard and Apparated to the Knockturn Alley, in front of the Borgin & Burkes.

"What are we doing here?" She asked, stepping closer to him and holding on to the lapel of his coat with strength, pulling him to her.

"I work here! Stop pulling me!" He complained as he released her and looked for his keys in his pockets. "I swea-" He was starting to curse under his breath. He pushed her aside and stretched to reach the top of the doorframe where they hid a copy of the key for when Borgin was too drunk and had to walk back to the store.

Tom was about to put the key in the lock when it suddenly open and amiddle-agedd man stood there, looking unamused and in a bad mood. "What do you think you're doing?"

"Excuse me?" Tom replied dryly with a frown.

"Excuse what?" Ginny recognized the wizard as Mr Burke, the son of the owner of the store. "We are closed today, go away!"

"Closed?" Tom repeated half incredulous.

"Yes! Closed! Are you stupid or something, boy? C-L-O-S-E-D!" With that Mr Burke closed the door on Tom's face and hit the glass over the sign with the same word.

Tom looked at her, but Ginny was focusing on the wizard inside the store and how the expression on his face was changing from annoyance to recognition and then to fear as he started to open and close his mouth like a fish.

In a wimp of inspiration Ginny grabbed Tom and Apparated to her house.

"What the hell was that for?" He asked trying to catch his breath, grabbing his shirt over his hearth.

Ginny ignored him and opened the gate for the garden, she was starting to understand what was happening to him and she needed time, she needed to see if her theory was true.

"What the hell is _that_!?" Tom had finally noticed her house and by the look on his face he was not impressed.

"Shut up and come in." She pulled his arm and he walked with her, always looking up, feeling unsafe as the layers of The Burrow towered dangerously over him.

"You live here?"

"Better than a fucking orphanage." She told him without thinking and he stopped. Ginny turned around and he was simply there, looking at her in silence with a frown. "Just get in…" She opened the door and pulled his arm again but he took it back with a push.

"How do you kn-" Ginny rolled her eyes and walked around him and shoved him inside, making him lose his balance.

Her family was sitting in the kitchen and they immediately stood up, their wands pointed at him.

"Ginny!" Percy screamed when she walked inside, but none of them lowered their wands.

She didn't reply, she waved and continued to push Tom in direction of the stairs and up the stairs.

"Will you stop that!?" He snapped when they reached the first floor, turning to her.

"It's just another flight… go on." She told him.

"What is going on?"

"I don't know."

"You're lying." He accused her and stopped, looking down at her. "I want to know what is going on!" He stated.

"I know, but give me time to make sense of it." She pleaded. He didn't move, simply staying there. "Please, Tom, trust me."

"I don't know you."

"I know you."

They stared in silence at each other.

"You're safe here, please."

He started to walk again and she directed him to the bedroom besides her. "Please stay here as I figure this out. There are clothes here if you need them, the bathroom is the door to your left in the hall. Make yourself at home." She walked the door. "Wait for me here." She said before closing the room and leaving him, not waiting for his reply.

Ginny walked to the kitchen and sat down, pulling a cup of tea to her.

"Something weird happened."

"We can see that…" Said Fred sarcastically.

"Why is he here? He looks weird…" Completed George.

"I don't know what happened," she started, scratching her skin under her bracelet. "He woke up thinking he works for the Borgin & Burkes and doesn't seem to know he is now the Prime Minister."

"He doesn't know he his You-Know-Who?" Her mother asked.

"You slept with him?" Fred asked looking disgusted.

"I didn't sleep with him!" She defended herself, just thinking her brother was referring that made her feel dirty. "Look, he kept me on this house for most of the day and at night I decided I have had enough and Apparated to the Leaky Cauldron." She stood up and started to take her coat and then her sweater. "Something happened soon after I left, I just kind of lost conscience," she stretched her tank top down so that they could see the blood on it. "I think he got hurt and since we seemed to be connected, I got hurt as well, it hurt." She dressed again. "I have a vague idea of him getting in my room, forcing me to drink this potion, me telling him to get lost and then just… passing out or something." She said with lower shoulders, she wished she knew more about what had happened.

"He doesn't remember who he is?" Her mother asked, surprised.

"No, he tried to enter the Borgin & Burkes, he is completely unaware." she drank her tea in one slip, "I have to go check on him, I just wanted to tell you this, we may be able to use it against him."

 _"_ _If I didn't told him more then I should already_ …" She thought to herself.

"Ron was able to take Hermione out of Azkaban," Percy said in low tone, almost happy, "that may explain why You-Know-Who was wounded last night."

"H-He did?" Ginny asked, standing up with a board smile, "Where are they?"

"In a flight to Australia, dad must be returning from London now, he dropped them there."

"Oh…"

"I think they will be safe," Percy said, "They are planning to live in the desert, away from everyone for the time being."

No one said anything, the next things to say where about the people that had died to help Ron.

"I am happy Ron was able to save her. I think Voldemort intended to give her to the Dementors." She said, walking away, going to check on Tom, she was not leaving him alone for hours as he had done with her.

His bedroom door was open and she entered, hearing him move around the bathroom. Over the bed was his coat, vest and stained shirt, she took them, folding them carefully and putting them back in the bed, almost with care. When she moved she noticed a letter had fallen over her foot and she grabbed it.

Not carrying much she unfolded it and quickly understood it was from Tiberius, it was the same letter he had started to read before she decided to stop carrying and Apparated to the Leaky Cauldron.

Tiberius' team had found more information regarding the bracelets.

"Are you ok?" His voice for the door made her turn around, holding the letter behind her back. "I took a shower, I couldn't handle the dry blood anymore."

"That's alright." She put the letter on her back pocket and pulled her sweater over it, she needed time to read it, to trace a plan with the Order to what to do with… Tom.

Not Voldemort.

Just Tom.


	6. Chapter 6

Ginny sat him down in the armchair next to the fireplace in the living room, her family sat away, in the kitchen, waiting and observing.

The Order had been quick in saying what they should try to do with Lord Voldemort and they were going to it a try.

They were there, ready to act if needed.

She sat down on the coffee table in front of him, rubbing her legs.

Tom looked around, "I feel like you're about to tell me I did something terrible…" He gave her a smirk, making her suddenly feel this situation was completely out of place.

"You are a long way away from home, Tom Marvolo Riddle." She said, looking up at him and seeing the smirk disappear from his lips, she knew he had worked hard to hide his middle name. "I know most of what there is to know about you."

He leant back, looking peacefully at her. It bothered her, he was the one supposed to be uncomfortable.

"I was given your Horcrux when I was eleven years old." She paused.

"Which one?" He asked, not fighting her words, accepting them. She supposed that, attending that he didn't remember what he was doing in the Leaky Cauldron and why he no longer worked for the Borgin & Burkes was a big help.

"The diary."

He didn't say anything.

"We became friends, you made me open the Chamber of Secrets and almost killed me." She said, refraining from touching him, she wanted to do it for some reason, but she wouldn't. She didn't dare.

"You died, Tom. Many years ago, then you returned and then you died again." She said, trusting that if he read anyone's mind he would only get references to You-Know-Who and think it was someone else, a new Dark Wizard, because that was what she was going to tell him, using his own ego against him. "There is someone else in your place now, one of your old followers, we don't know who he is, we don't his name, but he is the new Minister and he will not be pleased to know you are back."

Tom raised an eyebrow at her.

"There has been more than 50 years since you left the Borgin & Burkes." She said. "I don't know why you are here, or for what." She closed her eyes and gave a deep breath. "I did something yesterday," Ginny pulled his hand and touched his bracelet. "I didn't know this would happen," she showed him hers, "these bracelets connect us."

He chuckled, amused, and she pinched her cheek, with force, making him gasp and take his hand to his cheek.

"I am not joking." she lean to him. "I don't know what happened to you last night, why your clothes are different and where you got hurt to the point of bleeding the way you did." She explained very calmly. "I barely remember you entering my bedroom because of how much pain I was in."

"Right…" He pulled his arm up, to have a closer look at the bracelet around his wrist. "I am sorry… hmm… Ginevra, if I don't believe your story." She straightened her back. "If I am dead, it's impossible that the Alazne Bracelets brought me back."

"Y-you know what they are?" She asked, taken aback.

"It was the first job I went with Burke, when I started to work for him." He pulled her hand to him to look at her bracelet. "We got them as payment for… some things and since we were trying to improve our relationship with the Ministry, we make sure to always check our merchandise against the Red Book."

"Red Book?"

"The Red Book of stolen magical objects" he explained, "someone stole them from the Ministry and took them to Poland in the turn of the century, this weird family was trying to have their kids married and wanted them to be happy… and in love." He went silent there, as he realised the meaning of his words.

"Do you know how to take them off? How to break th-this curse!" She rose to her feet, covering her mouth with her hand, trying to keep herself calm.

How come he didn't know that yesterday? Why did he act as if it was something he knew nothing about?

"We have to go!" He was on his feet in a glimpse of an eye, pulling her to him with him to the stairs.

Tom waved and the cupboards opened, food starting to fly to the table, organising itself to be stored away, they were going away, she noted, and by the amount of provisions, they were going to be away for a while.

They were almost in her floor when she heard the front door open and the startle cry of her father.

Tom shoved her inside her bedroom and closed the door behind him.

"What do you know?" She asked him, nervous.

"Shut up!" He said walking to her in a way that made her start to walk back. The back of her legs hit her bed and she fell down.

"No!" She started to panic, trying to take her hair from her face and see him as he moved over her.

"Just shut up!" He said, turning her on her stomach and raising her sweater.

"No! Stop!" She pleaded.

Tom took the letter from the back of jeans with a deep breath, rubbing his face. "What was that!" he said with a shiver, feeling his hearth start to slow down, "and don't get that dramatic, I just wanted this, or you thought I wouldn't notice you had taken it?"

Ginny slipped to the floor, kneeling, trying to calm.

"What did you thought I was going to do?" He asked with disgust.

"I-I…"

"Don't fool yourself, I know you're lying and I know I am missing… how long did you say I worked in that store? 50 years? That's how many time worth of memories I have lost." With a wave of his hand that day's Daily Prophet was in in his hand, Tom unfold it with a grunt and turned it to her. "Prime Minister." He said, his photo in the front page, a recent one besides one of he looked like not even 72 hours ago. "If you know me as well as you said you do, you should now I am not stupid." He threw the newspaper to the floor and walked to the window, unfolding the letter by the light. "Be a charm and pack us some clothes, we are going to find the Goblin Clan that made them."

Ginny simply stared at him.

"NOW!" He screamed and she jumped to her feet, running to her wardrobe to find a bag to put her clothes in.

She had tried, but she had overestimated him again, it had been naïve of her to think she could trick him.

Her door flew open and her dad entered. "What is going on?" He asked with his wand on his hand.

"We are going to end this silly curse." Tom said coldly. "I have no intentions of bonding with your daughter." That seemed to take Arthur aback. "Can you arrange us a trip to -? We need to reach the – Mountains?" He asked, folding the letter.

"Y-yes!" Arthur put his wand away, whatever he needed to do to never step a foot in his house again. "But not today, I need time."

"How much?" Tom asked stepping in his direction.

"As long as I need!" Arthur left shaking his head and muttering something angry.

"Your dad seems to be in a bad mood…" Tom said smirking at her.

"I wonder way…" she hit the suitcase a couple of times, feeling herself calm down, promising herself not to jump to his orders the next time it happened, to scream back at hi, "help me with this." He rolled his eyes and made it float with a wave of his hand.

"We will have to camp, I don't have enough money to take you on a tour through Europe." She walked to the kitchen, her family had already left, not even Molly was around. "I think I remember where we put the tent."

She opened the garage, half empty because the bitten blue Ford was parked outside after Mr Weasley took Ron and Hermione to London. They had long stopped to try to convince her dad to expand the interior of the garage, but he liked it to be messy, _like a real Muggle garage should be_ , he said in his defence.

Ginny walked inside, leaving Tom behind, slightly bending to a box next to the door.

"I am not sure where it is…" She said, looking around, slightly kicking one box to the side and making the VHS's inside shake inside.

"Just use an _accio_." He said, stepping back.

"I can't, my dad doesn't want us to use magic here." Ginny spotted the bag with the tent in a shelf and dragged the leader to it. "Can you come help me here?"

"Really?" He asked unimpressed.

"Yes! Really!" She rolled her eyes then followed him as he walked to her, it was like speaking with the Tom from the Horcrux.

"Why does your father have so many Muggle things?" Tom walked to her, holding the leader as she went up.

"He likes them." She looked down when he didn't reply but quickly climbed the rest of the steps. She couldn't see it very well and it was heavy, she pulled it once, then again with more strength, at the first attempt it fell right behind Tom making him look up at her startled, right in time to catch her as she followed the tent down with a scream.

She stayed in his arms, holding to his sweater as if her life depended on it, breathing hard, trying to compose herself. She was not doing it fast enough because he put her down, helping her sit on the tent and shaking his arms in discomfort.

"You're heavier than you look…"

"Thanks, Tom, that was really nice of you." She got up and dragged the tent outside until she could use magic to move it. She mounted it next to the kitchen door, she had not been inside since Harry, Hermione and Ron had taken it some years ago.

She walked inside, opening the door wide and commanding all the tiny windows to do the same, airing the space. It was not that bad. Tom entered when she walked out, leaving a couple of spells in charge of cleaning and decluttering the tent as she prepared some water to wash sheets and the kitchen things.

"Does it please you, my lord?" She asked sarcastically, walking around him with a box full of food.

"It will do." He turned and left.

She didn't saw him again during the day, leaving her alone with the preparations and he didn't go down to have dinner. Her father returned late, looking drained and carrying an old book, a portkey that would leave them a couple of weeks away from the Mountain.

"A couple of weeks?" she asked, "what is that supposed to mean? Can't we just Apparate there after the portkey?"

"The place is protected against wizards, you will have to walk."

That was the worst thing she had heard that day.

Ginny dragged herself up the stairs, she was not feeling like going on that trip, two weeks with him alone was too much.

She had a quick shower and went to bed, trying to find a comfortable position and sleep, it was the last time she was going to do it alone for some time, in a comfortable bed.

She woke up a couple of hours later with her mattress moving, Tom was sitting beside her, staring down at her with Tiberius letter on his hand.

"I think I am doing quite well." He said, flipping the sheets of the letter.

"What do you mean?" She rubbed her eyes and crossed her legs. "Can't this wait for tomorrow? We have to get up early and walk most of the day."

"I wrote back to Tiberius."

"Saying what?" She looked at him confused; she had never finished reading the letter that morning.

"Have you stopped to think about who I am today?"

"What do you mean?"

"Ginevra, you are destroying who I am." He lean towards her. "What happened between you and my Horcrux?"

"I don't think it's relevant for our situation." She said, sliding a bit back.

"I need to know, I need to know everything."

"You already know most of it…" She looked around, trying to think of a way of making him go away.

"I don't remember." He stated. "Tiberius sent me this magazine with an unofficial biography of myself… I wish he had not done it."

"Why?" She was not understanding what he meant. "Tom, you are making no sense…"

"What happened between us in the Chamber?" He ignored her.

"Well, I found your diary between my thin-" He raised his hand to stop her.

"I don't care about that, I want to know the terms of the spell. You said I made you open the Chamber, do you know how I did it?"

"You poured a bit of your soul in me…" She said, quietly as he rubbed the bridge of his nose, mumbling how stupid he was when he was sixteen. "Can you explain me what is going on?"

"Who gave you the diary?"

"Lucius Malfoy…"

"It's odd, you know?" He said, annoyed. "That I didn't destroy those bracelets the first moment I had a chance, have we spoken about this before?"

"This is our ssecond-longestconversation." He rolled his eyes at her.

"It's almost like I didn't know what happened with you. We are the perfect target for these bracelets. How did you find them?"

"I kind of felt them calling me. Why do you say that?"

"I need more time to think about it, I am not sure, I know the as you do, we are connected."

"I don't want to be connected with you in anyway..."

"Do you think I want this?" He laughed, pointing at her with his hand. "We are about to go inside one of the last wild clans of goblin, you know as well as I do how dangerous that is." Ginny didn't reply, feeling his frustration. "I am a quarter of the powerful wizard I seemed to be yesterday night."

"You say that as if it's my fault." She replied defensively. "I don't want this! Do you think I liked to see you with that face, standing in my kitchen aft- afte- _You are Lord Voldemort_ , you are disgusting!"

"Still, according to Tiberius, I am this because you want me to be." The ice of his voice almost cut her and she didn't even understood what he was talking about. "How dense are you?" He chuckled, not a drop of amusement in his voice. "I am the same age you are because you want me to be, I forgot 50 years of my life because you are afraid of me."

"I-"

"It's the bracelets, they know what you want and they are giving you what you want." He got up, walking away from her. "Pray that I don't wake up tomorrow thinking we are friends, otherwise we won't be able to find the goblins and I may not even be old enough to do what needs to be done if we fail." He closed the door behind him, even the quiet sound of the lock clicking into place made her jump, his words resounding on her and making her question what exactly was going on.

He had left the letters behind and she finally started to read.

" _Lumos_ " she said under her breath and pulled the letters to her.

Most of Tiberius' first letter described what had happen to other couples in their situation, what they had tried to do, what had failed and how long the bracelets had taken to fulfil their spell. Ginny was not liking what she was reading, it was mostly descriptions of people, not forced to love, but forced to mate and bond that resigned to their condition when the bracelets decided it was time.

For most it had worked, hormones overcoming emotions and they called it love, but that was it, a fake mask over feelings they created to be free that resulted in a long-term prison.

Ginny was starting to feel her heart tighten; she didn't want that for her, not even to the wizard that had just left her bedroom. What kind of life would it be?

The next letter, she didn't know how he had managed to send it without them noticing it, but it was a reply to something he had written to Tiberius. Tom had decided to trust this man, she didn't know how as he never trusted anyone, and tell him that he had lost part of his memory and he was worried that the bracelets where going to do something worse to his well-being. He sounded worried and Tiberius' tone was not much better than his.

She put the letter down and lay back in her bed, turning her back to the door.

The curse was progressing faster than Tiberius was aware of being possible, if the fact that they could feel each other's pain was bad, things were about to get even worse.


	7. Chapter 7

Ginny almost walk against Tom the next morning. He was dressed and ready, looking fresh and sharp and glaring down at her like she didn't even deserve to be in his presence.

She ignored him.

Looking at the mirror, she could see why. With her hair pointing everywhere and her eyes red and puffed from crying most of the night. It went perfectly well with the dark circles under her eyes. And the red nose. She rubbed her eyes and sniffed, annoyed, he could as well as get used to see her like that, they were about to go in a lovely adventure in the middle of the bloody nowhere for who knew how long!

She took her time getting ready. Ginny knew she should hurry up, if they couldn't use magic then they had a long journey ahead and the faster they started it, the better, but she was dreading it, she didn't want to go and spend all that time alone with him. She still hadn't overcome the last time she had been alone with him for an extended period of time like this.

Last time it happened, he had almost killed.

Tom, was sitting in one of the corners of the table, a finger hovering over his mug moving in a small lazy circle, cooling his coffee as he read that day's Prophet, her family was sitting on the opposite side, trying to pretend they were eating while staring suspiciously at him.

He was completely out of his element there, it really was time to go and stop all of this nonsense. Maybe she could push him down the mountain the moment the bracelets were broken and solve a bigger problem than the one started by the bracelets.

The suitcase was by the door, next to the tent's bag, the portkey resting on top of the kitchen counter beside them.

"I am ready to go…" She announced softly, with a tired sigh. Tom didn't look up to her, or move, or gave any sign of acknowledge her presence there, but her family did. Arthur walked to her and pulled her into his arms for a tight hug.

"You came down just in time, another five minutes and the portkey is open." He said letting her go, caressing her cheek, reprimanding her despite because she could make himself say that he didn't want her to go with the Dark Wizard sitting in his kitchen, that he would go on her place to see the Goblins and make everything right, fix this. "You will get this solved." He told her, and she wanted to believe his words.

Her mother was the next one to hug her, and then her brothers and she almost hug Tom as he stood there, the wing of the tent's bag crossing over his chest and the suitcase in one hand as he extended the old book to her, shaking it slightly so that she would hold it as well.

The kitchen went under a heavy, awkward silence as they stood there, waiting for the time to pass and the enchantment in the paper activated and take them away from England.

It was dragging.

Next thing they were standing on a hill and it was raining, heavily. They pulled their wands, summoning an umbrella spell to protect them and started to walk down the path.

"You should have put the suitcase inside the tent." He said giving it to her.

"I forgot." She said, accepting the weight. "Where do we go from here? Do you know the way?" she asked.

"Not completely…"

"You don't know where we are?" she frowned, "We are lost and we haven't even started?" she questioned in disbelief.

"I know where we are, your father told me where the portkey would lead us." he said starting to walk, a slight annoyance in his voice, "And I have been in the village where we are going now before, the local pub his owned by a magic family and they sell some trail maps to the mounta-"

"Are you for real?" she caught up with him, "What are the odd of that?" She asked sarcastically.

"Life sometimes provides us with happy coincidences…" He replied rolling his eyes, deciding to keep to himself the fact that he had signed the forms to authorize the portkey when her father had brought them from the Ministry and sent a letter to Lucius Malfoy ordering him to check if this village still had the pub and if it was still run by wizards.

He had planned everything the best he could from the privacy of her guest room and she hadn't even noticed.

This was the witch he was going to get stuck with if he wasn't able to break the bracelet's spell.

She didn't reply immediately and he hoped that would shut her up, certainly there was no need for much to make satisfy her curiosity and divert her attention to something else that did not involve speaking.

"Are you sure that the pub is still run by that family?" She asked, making him sigh.

"We will find out once we get there." He said with a final intonation to his words that would welcome any more questions.

The hill where the portkey had taken them was less than half an hour and he was already tired of her company if it was going to be like this, her making noise with her stupid and unnecessary questions, it was going to be a long journey.

The village was a small picturesque, the church's tower was visible from afar and the dark wet roofs made it look a bit sinister and cold. Maybe not sinister, just melancholic, sad, the starting point of a horrible voyage… Ginny sighed, it was a lovely village, she simply couldn't make herself appreciate it.

There was no one around when they started to enter the village, it was just a couple of houses before the main street actually started. Tom pulled her to a small alley between a house and a high fence and pointed his wand at Ginny, startling her and making her hold her breath. He muttered something but nothing happened, he pointed the wand at himself and his hair turned blond. She pulled a tress of her own hair and it was light brown, very different from her usual colour.

"Good thinking!" She told him with a smirk, but Tom didn't bother to reply, walking away, pulling the strap over his shoulder to a different position so it would dig that much on his skin.

They walked for another ten minutes before he found the pub and they both entered. It was bright inside, the space lighted by fluorescent lamps and the design was rushed as if they had found the furniture on the side of the road after some days of being in the rain. It was very different from what she was used to see back home, she twisted her nose at the smell of alcohol.

She was looking at some photos on the wall when she caught what Tom was saying, maybe caught the strange sound of the words because she couldn't understand what he was saying to the middle-aged man on the other side of the counter.

After a minute or two he put the tent on the floor with a sigh of relief, massaging his shoulder, "I ordered us some breakfast, I noticed you haven't eaten anything today as well," he said sitting down on the nearest table, "I still think about the food here from time-to-time, I hope it's still as I remembered."

Ginny sat down as well, looking around, "I thought we were in a hurry," she said.

"We are, but things here are a bit different," he said, still rubbing his shoulder, "can you feel this?" He asked her, crossing his legs.

"I do, but I am not a delicate flower that needs to express its pain all the time." She snorted, making him roll his eyes and lean forward, resting his clasped hands on the table.

The breakfast came with the maps for the area and they continued to eat in silence. She couldn't understand a word of what was written on those maps which left her feeling uneasy; she did not like this level of dependency on Tom.

She tried to focus on the fact that he was not going to harm her and allow anything to happen to her since he would feel first-hand what she was feeling. That though lead her to remember she had the same obligations to him, if he knocked his head on a branch and fell unconscious, she was going to the ground with him.

Could she hate her life more?

Probably yes.

They finished their meal, Tom paid for the food and maps and they were on their way.

It had stopped raining and Tom pushed into another alley, opening one of the maps for a moment to look at one of the photos to have an orientation point to what he was about to do. "I am going to take us to the furthers point we can Apparate in the forest, ready?" He asked holding her arm and not really waiting for her reply.

They arrived next to a stone cross in a glade.

"What is going to happen from here?" She asked, putting the suitcase down and approaching the muggle cross.

"Now we walk to the mountain," Tom replied, "and hope for the best." He stood beside her, touching the rough stone, "This is the furthest the Muggles ventured, they sometimes come here but as it happens with Hogwarts, they always find something more interesting to explore and never remember this place very well."

"Do you think the Goblins will listen?" She asked, turning to him.

"Let's see…"

"That's not good." She said, following him with her eyes as he started to walk the path towards the trees.

"It's this or mate, what do you prefer?" He asked looking over his shoulder.

Ginny didn't reply, quivering at the sound of his words as he said out loud, for the first time since they knew what was the purpose of those bracelets, what was actually expected of them to do. She enchanted the suitcase and made it float beside her, trying to leave the awkward and disgusting feeling behind.

"That strap is really starting to hurt, Tom, can't you make the bag float?" She asked some time later.

"Can't you carry that thing by hand? I can feel the headache you are getting for forcing that spell." He replied coldly.

"Well…" She stopped and he stopped to look at her, vastly displeased with the tone of her voice.

"I did bring a broom." She said, a small smile on her lips.

"No." Was his simple answer to the question she was going to make next.

"Oh! Come on… Magic is still working! We could cover a lot if we flew!" She tried to plead. "I would ask _you_ to fly us there, but you don't know how." She stated, pressing a couple of his buttons.

Tom didn't reply, despite her seeing that he was blaming her for that. They didn't walk more than a couple of hours after that, magic stopped to work and the suitcase fell to the ground. "I need to put this inside the tent." She announced as nothing special had just happened as if losing the ability to use magic was something that kind of happened regularly.

Tom let the tent bag fall to the ground as well and sat on a nearby tree root, rubbing his shoulder.

She smirked at him, and mentally crossed her fingers before pinching her arm as she walked to the bag, staring at Tom and being rewarded with a twitching muscle under his eye that meant that he had felt it.

 _Good sign!_ She thought, maybe the protections around the place only applied to wizards and not objects because she was not feeling like having to try to remember how to assemble a tent by hand. It had been ages since her dad had thought her and the predominant memory was that she had hated any minute of it, not how to actually do it.

She took the bag off, pulled the hook and fortunately the tent started to assemble itself.

"That was close, was it not?" Tom asked walking to her.

"I would have needed help, do you understand that, don't you?" She asked, entering the tent as it started to rain again. He followed her inside, brushing his air from his eyes. "Really?"

"What?" He looked at her with a raised eyebrow and she walked out to get the suitcase. She could be unpleasant too. "Are you ready to go?"

"No, I am not going anywhere before you tell me where we are going and what you plan to do once we get there." She told him, sitting down in the nearest bed, rubbing her head. "Think about it, ok?" She laid down and rolled on her side, turning her back to him, she really had overdone it with the levitation spell, her head felt huge.

"Are you joking?" He asked, dangerously, not believing what his eyes were seeing. "We don't have time for this! You know what is a-" Magic just happened to work inside the tent and she used it to it close the curtain.

When she later woke up, she found him reading at the table, he didn't look at her, he didn't acknowledge her and she didn't care.

He was pissed at her and she was hungry.

"What?" Ginny asked, noticing him look at her as she sat across from him with her plate full of eggs and bacon. "If you are thinking about me making you food, don't." She informed him, daring him to ask her. "You can help yourself to the food you took from my house, make yourself comfortable," she took a bite of her eggs to stop herself from laughing at his expression, he looked partially offended, partially something else, "pretend you are at home!" She told him with a big smile, making him sigh and roll his eyes.

"Look, I don't understand what is going on with you today, we just lost hours that we could have used in a more productive way, but I am honestly not going to ask you because I don't want to get angry." That made Ginny narrow her eyes at him and raise, walking to him.

"I know your head was hurting as much as mine, and I know your shoulder is a mess…" Before he could react she had pulled his shirt down, revealing the hunded skin and stepping away. "Your other version seemed to be a bit more aware of how close we actually are, try to remember that as well." She told him, as she invoked the first aid quit. She put it on the table and took a healing potion and a ball of cotton. "Let me see!"

"You must be _delusional_!"

Ginny opened her eyes at him, warning him. "I don't care about what you think! Let me see it because I don't want my arm to fall because you got an infection." She grabbed his sweater, trying to pull it down again but he grabbed her wrist. They struggled and fought and Ginny made her ancestors proud, but he was still stronger than her and she lost her balance and fell on him, sitting on his legs, her chest against his.

She straightened herself, her breathing catching up as she pressed her hands on him to balance herself, suddenly very aware of _him_ , of his presence, of the places where their bodies touched, of his hand on her leg and the other on her hip.

They were too close and the time seemed to stop for a moment.

"The little scene you made today…" He said, raising his hand to touch a tress of her hair, still light brown, his voice dangerously low, and not in the threatening mode she expected to go with those words. "Don't do it again, we have to find those Goblins." He lowered his hand, releasing the red hairs and moved his other hand down, resting his hand on her knee, his fingers sliding behind it.

She smirked at him and pulled his clothes down, pressing the cotton down on his skin. "It wasn't so hard, was it?" She asked, ignoring what he was saying. He was right, of course, it was hard to catch him being wrong, but she was not going to allow him to boss her around as if she was eleven years old again.

She stood up and took care of her own hound, watching from the corner of her eye as he pulled his strengthen his clothes and pulled one of the maps to him, half shrugging, half shivering.

She also thought it had been intense.

She crossed the tent, to the rudimental bathroom where they stored the small kit. Resting her hips against the small metal sink she rolled the bracelet in her wrist, she sighed, what were they going to do if the Goblins didn't release them of the bracelets?

They should start speaking about it.

Ginny frowned, feeling a pattern under her fingertips. Raising her wrist to see the bracelet closer, she saw the intricate floral design. How had she not seen it before? It was half way around the bracelet like it was some a rudimental way of counting time.

"Tom?" She called, leaving the bathroom to go to him.

"I have noticed it too." He said, looking genuinely worried, nervous.

She had never seen him like that, it scared her.


	8. Chapter 8

"Yes, but Tom, listen…" Ginny insisted again, still having a hard time coming to peace with the new layer of trouble that they noticed the previous night. They had not needed much time to understand that the floral pattern that appeared on the bracelets, not all of the sudden but who knew how long ago, since the bracelets managed to go unnoticed to them most of the time.

It was not that long ago, the patter was not there when Voldemort went to Ginny's house that unfaithful morning some days ago.

Whatever it was marking, whatever would come when the pattern joined, they didn't want to find out about it.

They were on their way before the Sun was even raising on the horizon. Ginny had left their suitcase inside the tent and enchanted the tent bag to make its contents weightless.

It was a weird kind of protective magic that was going on in those mountains. It only seemed to affect the caster of the spell but not the objects they had enchanted. It's was useful, they would never complain about it, but it was still odd.

"Ginevra, just stop. I don't know, you don't know, let's just save ourselves a headache discussing assumptions." Tom told her, stopping her from speaking again about what time she thought they head until the pattern closed.

"I am sorry, I am just worried." She muttered, she was almost terrified to say the true. She was almost sure that the pattern appeared when he lost his memory, she had told him that but he dismissed it, rightfully, as he naturally didn't remember anything before he woke on her bed that morning in the Leaky Cauldron.

Ginny was slightly surprised by the cold logic he was applying to the situation. He didn't let himself go on ideas or theories and he put down anything she said that he had not thought about by himself. He was not being arrogant or cynical as if he was the only that could be right. He was simply analyzing what she was saying, weighting it about the few facts he knew about their situation and would actually explain to her why he thought she was wrong.

They had actually reached a limit and their conversation was turning in brainstorming, something that he clearly was not in the mood to do.

Maybe it was not such a bad thing because she was already half freaking out.

She let herself fall a couple of steps behind him so that she could stretch her arms to the side. She was starting to get tired and could feel a slight pain in her knee that was not hers so they would probably going to be stopping soon.

Ginny knew Tom would never admit to be in any kind of pain, but despite being in good shape he was not the kind of person that exercised and she could tell. He read and he thought and he wrote, she couldn't even imagine him on top of a broom so Quidditch might be something he had never done in his life.

Maybe she was wrong.

She also didn't understand how he could be so calm.

She couldn't also understand how different Tom was from… well… Voldemort. How could she explain it? Voldemort was more volatile, he would lose control if something didn't go exactly like he wanted it to go. Now that he had lost the memories of that part of himself, he was a lot calmer, more composed and contained. This man, walking in front of her, was as close as it got to the Tom she knew from the diary and that she had actually liked.

Quite a lot.

Her best friend.

She shook her head and caught up with him.

He was not her friend anymore and was never going to be.

She ran her finger through the hair in the back of his head, dishevelling it. "Your hair is still blond." She told him, she kind of didn't like to see that colour on him, couldn't match him less. "Why did you even changed out hair colours yesterday?" She didn't though about what she had done but by the way his shoulders tensed and raised, he might have not liked it.

"I didn't want anyone to recognise use." He said, too late to hide his discomfort.

"Do you think there is anyone here, in this end of the world, that could do that?" Ginny asked skeptically, really doubting that was possible.

"You would be surprised." He said as if he knew.

Tom didn't know. He had no idea of how powerful he actually managed to be so he was trusting Tiberius's word on what to do and how to behave.

He had gone to Hogwarts with Tiberius, they were the same age. It was, in fact, strange to think about Tiberius in his 70's because for him, he had gotten a letter from him the other week saying his wife, Miriam, that he also knew quite well, was pregnant with their first child.

If it was not for the urgency of breaking the curse that connected him to the girl, he would rather sleep this through because he did felt in the edge of going mad.

It was a bit too much, even for him.

He had simply woken in someone else's life.

"Are you not going to turn it back?" Her words pierced his thoughts.

"I don't really care about the colour of my hair…" He sighed. "Why is this so important all of the sudden?" He asked not bothering to look at her.

"Nothing, I am just asking," she pulls a tress of her red hair and look at it, "You changed mine back to normal… that's all."

He didn't say anything to that and that made Ginny smirk and bite her lip trying to contain what was on her mind.

"Do you like me better with red hair, Tom? Is that a thing for you?" The air with which he looked at her made her chuckle. It was the kind of look of someone who would really like to die in that moment.

She could tell he was not embarrassed, she had simply given the last kick to his patience's head and it was dead.

Completely and absolutely dead for that day.

"I think we should rest." She said, making him suddenly have to turn whatever argument he was going to state into something else.

"It's barely noon, can't you wait another couple of hours before having to stop to eat?" He asked rubbing his face with both hands as he felt part of himself start to despair. Wishing that the curse they were sharing didn't connect them physically and he could just punch her, since using magic at the moment was out of question or otherwise he would put a _Cruciatus_ on her.

"I can, but you need to sit down for a bit, Tom." She stopped and look at him without a trace of the tentative joke she had just attempted. "You know I can feel your knee."

He gave a big sigh and look up to the sky, to the ceiling of trees above their heads.

"Fine." He finally said.

Ginny had put some food and water in a backpack and she put them down by the old trunk of a tree a bit to the side of the path they were following.

"Did you always have problems with that knee?" She asked between bites of her sandwich as she rubbed her own leg.

"What?" He look at her for a moment, confused by her interest in his health. "I had… a disagreement with a kid before I started Hogwarts…" He said, remembering how the older boy had pushed him a flight of stairs in the orphanage when he was six or seven years old. He had open his head as well, he could still feel the scar under his hair, but his knee had never recovered from hitting those old wooden steps in that horrible house in London.

It was annoying, from time-to-time, and he had thought a lesson to the kid to such a point that despite that they lived together until they came of age every time he was sent to the orphanage to spend his holidays, he never spoke another word to Tom.

"I have a potion that can help you with that." Ginny didn't pressure him, she knew him well enough to have an idea of what those words meant.

She asked him if he thought he could walk for the rest of the day or if he minded losing another hour to assemble the tent for her to get him the potion or not.

Tom, of course, said no and they walked for another couple of hours before both of them were starting to limp.

She made him sit on the small couch and dragged one of the small kitchen's chairs for him to rest his leg on as she went to look for the potion.

"I don't think we are very good at hiking, Tom." She said as she sat in the small armchair next to him and passed him the vial. He rolled his eyes and drank the potion without commenting. "You will really have to rest for the potion to take effect."

"What about you?" He asked, pulling a pillow over is lap to rest his hands, breathing deeply as the potion relaxed his muscles.

"I am already feeling better." She told him with a small smile.

Ginny picked a book and pretend to read it as he drifted off in the couch beside her. That blond hair, that so ill fitted looked on him, she could keep her eyes out of it.

She actually did not like to see it on him. At all. It made her want to pick her wand and turn it back to black. He had the most amazing shade of black - not like Harry's – the intrusive though came with a bang to her heart. She stood from her armchair and sat beside him, close enough to feel the warmth his body radiated. Masculine. So different from hers and was making her want to touch him, feel the hair she had barely felt that morning between her fingers, feel the curve of his nape under her hands, the softness of the skin of his neck under her own skin and discover if the feeling would continue down his shoulders and then down his chest.

He moved, his head falling to the side and resting on the couch has he relaxed more into his sleep. Her eyes were immediately on his neck, long and slender due to the way he rested, his mouth slightly open as his jaws relaxed and he gulped making his Adam's apple move up and down in a hypnotizing way.

Ginny had never wanted to touch something in her life as she wanted to touch him in that moment, kiss that exposed skin, hear the sounds that would come out of it as she caressed and taste it and… she was so close, less than a barely visible distance from the curve of his neck and she could feel the warmth of the blood flowing almost under her half open lips.

She could almost taste him.

She stood up all of the sudden, hands over her mouth to constrict the scream she wanted to make.

She had been really close to touch him, sitting in one of her legs as she had been, her hands resting on the couch on either side of his head, leaning over him and ready to take something that was only his to give.

What was she _thinking_?

She gave half a turn in the same place, facing away from him and his stupid ill fitted blond hair and run to the small kitchen, trying to find something to busy herself with, to keep her hands on something that was actually safe to touch, like knives.

She was halfway through cutting the vegetables for dinner when she had to steady herself in the small counter and give a big breath in. She stepped back and leaned forward, stretching her back and arms, letting her head fall between her shoulder and her chin touch her collarbones.

What exactly was she thinking? _Really_?

"Are you okay?" The rough sound of his voice came from the couch, making him cough to clear his throat. She took a look at him under her stretched arm, between her hair that was falling all around her face, and felt a wave of relief as she confirmed that he hadn't noticed what she had almost done, that he had really been asleep.

"Yes… I am just stretching my back a bit." She replied as she got back up again. He look weirdly at her but didn't say anything about her odd ideas of stretching with knives in her hands.

"I am going to lay down." He said and stood up, testing his weight on his leg before starting to walk to his bed.

"I will wake you when the dinner is ready." She said with an exaggerated smile that made him frown even more then he would have done just for what she said.

"Sure… thank you."

They stared at each other but Tom eventually laid down and pulled the curtain that would magically keep any light and sound away from his bed.

* * *

Tom was up before she had to concern herself with actually having to get close to him and wake him up, with which she was infinitely thankful.

The furthers away he was, the happier she was going to be.

"Are you feeling alright?" He asked, sitting down across from her and having a slip of the water she had poured on his glass. "Yesterd-"

"I was bored." She replied, moving her food around her plate with the fork. "There isn't much I can help you with it so I don't have much to do."

"We will do more progress tomorrow…" He said tiredly, resting his knife down to touch the bracelet, noting that the pattern had moved again. If it kept going like that it would be closed in three or four days. It was ridiculous how their trip had started and how little they had achieved, but walking was a slow task so the little they did had almost nothing to show for it.

He cursed the goblins for their protective spells, things would be so much easier if they could use magic.

Still, he found her strange, her behaviour was a little different from what it was before they camped for the day. He wished he could just read her mind. To say the truth, he was not completely well himself. There was this thing, this ball forming in his stomach that seemed to expand a little bit every time he looked at her. He had felt it for the first time when he woke in her bedroom and the feeling had smoothly gotten bigger and as everything else, he really did not wish to know what would happen when he could no longer bare it.

It was the bracelets messing with their heads, he was sure of it. Tom knew the girl across from him felt it too but was simply choosing to ignore it.

Will this hell ever end?

They didn't spoke much after that, he sat on the couch, making notes on his maps and she stayed on the side of the small kitchen, sitting on the table, reading an old comic book she had found in a drawer.

She did ask him if he was feeling better about his knee, but not much more. The air inside that tent was weird, awkward and tense.

The next two days were a lot more successful and they managed to walk most of the distance that separated them from one of the entries to the Goblins world. Things had changed since the last time he had walked around that forest after he had finished Hogwarts.

He could barely wait to get there and she received the news with much relief, actually sitting down and breathing in.

On the morning of the third day, things changed.

Ginny woke after Tom, when she pulled the curtains of her bed back he was already sitting in the table drinking something, with his back to her.

He was going to kill her but she was done, she couldn't hold herself anymore.

Turning the bracelet in her wrist, she strode to him, her naked feet making no sound in the fabric floor as she crossed the small distance between them.

She wanted to feel his hair in her hand, even if it still was that horrible blond colour, touch his skin, feel his body against hers and she was going to do it.

In a blink of an eye she had her arms around his shoulders, embracing him from behind, pulling his back to her chest. Her face rested against his and to her surprise he sighed as if something huge had been lifted from his shoulders and he pressed his cheek against hers, seeking her touch as much as she wanted his and then leaned forward, pulling her with him, making her stand on her toes as he rested his head in his hand, running it through his brown as his other hand kept her close to him, deep in her hair, resting on the curve of her skull.

"Tom…" He let her go for a moment, to look at her. As he shook his head in something that she couldn't say was annoyance or disbelief, maybe the two. He pushed his chair back and pulled Ginny to his lap.

She didn't fought, pressing her tights to his sides as she put her arms around his shoulder again, letting a small sob out as he crossed his around her waist and pulled her to him as much as he could.

They stayed there for longer than they cared to tell but they were starting to feel better and nothing else matter.

She slipped away from him, sitting almost on his knees and sighed, tired as she was coming out of a week of sickness. "What is happening to us, Tom?" She asked, her voice barely audible over the sound of the blood that rushed through his hears as he relaxed in his seat, saved by her lack of control.

He chuckled, holding her hand on his and turning the bracelet around her wrist, tracing the pattern on it from one side to the other, complete and perfect in its cold iron-like base. "The time was up, that's all."


	9. Chapter 9

Tom and Ginny got uncomfortable close from there. Neither of them liked it and were happy about it but they had quickly come to accept it as it was the easy way.

After the initial shock on the previous morning, when she sat on his legs, holding each other's hands as the anxiety run through them and disappear, allowing them to feel like themselves again, they tried to avoid to have to touch again.

They were okay for the major part of the day, walking, barely stopping to eat or rest because all they felt was the urge to get to the Goblins and make them break open the bracelets so that they could go their different ways. But as the sun started to lower, that pull they had felt the previous night started to return, slowly and steady.

In an effort of keeping themselves busy they walked faster, almost braking in a slow jog. They endured it for another hour and this turn it was Tom that gave up. He was the first to feel his head going light and the rigidness on his muscles that could only be relieved by her touch, so he pulled her to him, his hand pushing her sweater up so that he could touch the bare skin of her back.

He sighed in relief of the mental and physical discomfort that was leaving him, ignoring everything around them as her temple rested against his cheek and her hands found their way around his neck.

They stayed like that for a long time, just the two of them in an empty trail surrounded by old trees that seemed to observe them and muttered between them.

When they finally found the courage to step away, Ginny was crying, she turned as she started to sob and shake as what she felt filled every inch of her being. Tom didn't care enough to comfort her, he didn't care if it was his touch that made her cry, if it was the hopeless situation they were in, if it was something else. He had what he wanted from her that evening and he just wanted to walk for another hour so he hadn't to deal with her much longer.

That was out of question so he put his bag down and kick into her direction. He knew how to assemble it, but he would rather let her do it, maybe it would make her stop crying.

He disappeared in to the trees, ignoring the sadness that was starting to grown on him as well. After all the goal of the bracelets was to bring two people closer and he had just stepped away from a situation where he was supposed to offer comfort.

He was not going to do that.

He didn't want a closeness bigger than the one they already had.

The imperative to touch her was more than enough for him.

When he returned, carrying wood in his arms to light the stove and warm the tent that Ginny had managed to assemble, he dropped it beside the entry and looked around, noticing her bed curtain's closed.

He didn't saw her the rest of the evening but woke with her on top of him the next morning.

He had fallen asleep in the couch, reading a book and during the night she had found her way to him. He could feel the folds of his raised sweater under his back and the skin of her stomach against his. Her hands rested under his clothes, slightly cold against his chest.

He run his own hands though her back, feeling the bones of her spine and ribs under his fingers and reluctantly admitted he was enjoying the softness of her skin more than he should.

He didn't stop the movement when something inside him repulsed his gesture and the logical part of his brain told him that this was what Tiberius wrote on the letter he addressed, not to him, but to Voldemort. The stories of the couples that accepted their faith, that were together not for love but for what they were starting to feel, an unwanted acceptance that they were going to have to share their lives until one died but that, somehow, it would be enjoyable and fulfilling.

More four or five days and they were going to find the Goblins and everything would be alright again. He wondered if he would disappear when the bracelets were removed, the memories he seemed to have forgotten would return and the man that ruled the Ministry of Magic would take his rightful place in this body.

What would be of small thing on his arms once that happened? He pressed his lips against her temple in a soft and long kiss, wondering about her future once they returned to the real world.

If that happened, she was dead, maybe she would not even ever leave this forest. If he never recovered his memories… he was not sure what he was going to do. He was not strong enough to run a country in fear, it would be delusional of him to think otherwise.

It was not wise to kill the only person that would probably be willing to help him in that circumstance.

She woke up and look up, an eye closed and the other barely open before burring her face in the folds of his sweater.

"Why are you still blond?" She asked in a muffed voice, making him smile at her silly question.

"I will change it back if it bothers you so much." He said amused.

"I am sorry… I don't want to be bossy."

"You are n-"

"I am sorry I invaded your space like this." She continued, not letting him talk. "I woke up feeling really sick and… you know…"

"I know.

They stayed like that like it allowed them to recharge a battery that would permit them to function normally for the rest of the day, they were not doing it because they wanted to, they were doing it because they needed to.

The day went on as it did the previous. They walked as fast as they could until their feet took them to each other's arms and they had to stop and breath.

It was with tears in her eyes that Ginny worked on pulling two beds together and it was crying that she laid down beside him, her back to him, laying on her side as far away from his presence as he could.

Just because they would seek one another during the night, it did not mean they had to start the night like that. This was simply easier.

Tom woke to find his sweater gone the next day and his hand resting in a thigh that had been covered the previous night. How it had happened, they didn't know, but they preferred not to speak about it as it would be opening a door they wished to remain closed.

Maybe it had been a bad idea, doing that willingly might give the impression that they were coming to terms with their curse and accepting it, when they were simply trying to work with the situation on hand. The bunk beds were too small for two people to sleep comfortably and they needed to rest to be able to walk the next day.

They couldn't afford to be tired.

They found that touching during the day helped keep the situation under control. So they would look for each other's hand when there was a part of the path that they needed to climb instead of seeking support in the branches of the trees. They would sit together to eat, Ginny's head resting on Tom's shoulder as she dryly ate her sandwich.

The Goblins were already waiting for them when they arrived to their door.

Small, vile little creatures, stuck in a time that no longer existed and more disturbing than the ones that operated Gringotts or that could be found lurking in corners of pubs and inns, happy to strike a deal to whoever was desperate enough for money to go to them.

These ones, this clan that lived in the Mountains where some of the last pure Goblins. Living in isolation, away from wizards and witches, only dealing with them when they wished to do so and never the opposite.

They had sensed the bracelets were coming home since the moment Tom and Ginny had stepped foot on their side of the world. The bracelets were filled with old and ancient magic, older then the wizards thought as they were made in a time when London was nothing but a small village by a river that hold on to its secrets.

The young witch and the not so young wizard were taken inside and escorted to the King.

The old Goblin was old enough to be young when the Muggles purged the lands of magic. He looked at the couple that had been forced to their knees before the golden steps of his old throne and smiled with a mouth full of rotten teeth.

"Well, well, well… who do we have here?" He asked, focusing his only good eye or in Tom or in Ginny. She felt his shoulder tense against hers as the mocking tone touched a nerve.

Ginny raised her arm, the bracelet reflecting the light of the torches around them. "Please take them off." She pleaded.

"What did you said?" The horrible King asked in his in-human voice, she was not making the question the correct way.

"Please take them off!" She said again, leaning forward in a bow that left Tom angry at her. A wizard should never bow to a monster. Still, he let her do it, it was her dignity and if she didn't mind letting go of it, he was not going to complain. They had the same goal after all.

"No."

The word made Ginny straight back up with a jerk and hold on to Tom's arm.

"Why not?" Tom asked, speaking for the first time since they arrived.

"Why, young dark wizard? Why?" The King laugh and his terrible court, hiding in the shadows, ready to kill them if they made the slightest move, laugh with him. "The bracelets got a live of their own the moment we took them out of their forge."

 _They did! They live! Foul!_ The goblins around repeated and agreed with their king.

"We created them a long time ago, longer then you think. We created them to the living gods of Egypt so that their blood could remain pure, yes we did," the King smiles his feral rotten smile and continued, "and when the living gods no longer needed them they continued on their way, always finding a family in need, sometime no-magical but mostly the opposite."

"There must be a way!" Ginny pleaded.

"There is one…" Tom look at her, a flash of red in his eyes that disappeared when he blinked. "There is a way, and he knows it!" A smirk on his lips letting her know that now he knew it too.

"YOU THERE CALLING ME A LIAR!" The King was on his feet.

"What do you have to win from this?" Tom asked, his voice cold and his face empty of any expression.

"TAKE THEM TO THE DUNGEONS!"

They were taken away to the belly of the mountain and put on different cells across from each other. Ginny pleaded to be put on the same as him as she knew what the distance was going to make to them, but the Goblins ignored what she was saying and did what they were ordered to do.

"You will die, Lord Voldemort." One of the disgusting guards said as he walked up the slim stairs to the upper levels. "There is no place in this world for wizards like you, and you must die."

Tom sat with his back against the rusting bars and did his best to ignore her stare. He looked at her cell, once, her piercing eyes on him didn't move or blink when he stared at them. She was almost invisible there, half in darkness, only her face visible in the dime light and that was him being generous.

When he turned away again she spoke.

"I have met you in three different stages of your life and I hate every single one of them," he heard her say and felt nothing from the gentleness of her words as he didn't care for her opinion on him, "but right now, I wish you would just stop playing stupid and get us out of here."

He chuckled as if it was his fault that they were stuck in this situation. If she hadn't found the bracelets, none of this would have happened.

"I want you dead, but I don't want to die with you."

"Maybe this is for the best," Tom said, turning to look at her and holding on to the bars of his cell "I know I still have my Horcruxes, if I die I will be brought back and you will disappear from my life forever. I don't see a problem here despite the fact of actually having to die."

"Are you sure they will bring you back?" She leaned forward, resting her arms on her knees.

"Of course."

"Still, you came in person to this dump, putting us both at risk, do you know what it says? It says you don't trust your Death Eaters enough to come here and kidnap a tiny Goblin and bring it to you." Her voice was calm, she was calm, to calm.

He didn't reply.

"You don't want anyone to know what happened to you, that you lost your memories. You even changed our appearance so no one would recognize us," she pointed out, "you are afraid that they will try to take what you conquered."

Silence again.

"Aren't you, Marvolo?" She asked calling him by the name he hated the most in this time of his life.

"I will find a way of taking us out of here," there were a couple of things he wanted to tell her, but he would just make her feel she was winning something. He didn't want to let her know that he feared that she was right.

"You better do." Those were the last sane words she said in that mountain.

The time went on, not fast as time never moves fast when we need it to do so. The imperative need they felt to touch and be close eventually made itself present, letting them know that if they were outside it would be almost time to assemble the tent and call it a day.

This turn they could not touch and there was nothing to do but sit and bare the increasing discomfort.

Something that they did not know that would happen, was the pain they would feel if they were not able to touch. They started feeling sick, their heads started to ache and their bodies to become sore, it was like they were going through the hard part of a strong flu.

Then it got worse and the feeling turned into pain and when Ginny touched her cheek to see what was the warm, dense liquid running down her face and she saw blood on her finger. She almost went crazy.

She grabbed on to the bars of her cell, shaking them, screaming at Tom. Her panicked screams called him from the darkness of the back of his own cell to the bars and he stared at her in horror as he realized that she was crying blood, that vision making him ignore the fact that he too was doing the same.

He tried to reach her, extending an arm through the bars in her direction, but she was too far away.

She screamed at him but he couldn't hear her, he didn't care for her words. Everything that mater was that she was in pain and he had to help her, find a way to free himself and go to _her_.


	10. Chapter 10

When Ginny woke up, she was lying down in a comfortable bed in somewhat dusty sheets and musty blankets.

Turning her head, following the sound of heavy breathing to her right, she found Tom sleeping by her side, he had his sleeves roughly pulled up to his elbow and his arm rested across her exposed stomach as his head laid on her shoulder. That explained the heaviness on that side of her body, she thought briefly before feeling stupid.

Touching her cheek with her fingers she scratched some of the dried blood that was stretching her skin. With a sigh, she let her hand fall to her chest and pressed her chin against his forehead.

He had taken them out of that place.

It was not the first time he slept like this, resting on her, and she would never get used to it. It made him look vulnerable, almost human and it didn't help that the slight frown he always seemed to have completely disappeared as he slept, making him look like a different person.

She shivered, there was something wrong with him. Something had happened.

Ginny sat up, ignoring the grunt he made when she moved away and slipped out of the bed. She walked to the dirty window and looked around the small square, where she had a good view of the church tower from the village where they started their journey into the mountains. They were not in the pub as she expected. She could see the electric sign on the wall from there.

"What is it, Weasley?"

Ginny slowly turn around, her eyes open in surprise as she realised what exactly was wrong.

 _He_ was back.

"What?" He asked, half awake and confused by the look on her face. He took his hand to his cheek and noticed the dried layer of blood on it. "What the h-" He was on his feet the next moment and crossed the small distance between the bed and the mirror on top of the chest of drawers to look at his face, then he look around. She could see him getting confused as he didn't recognize the room around him. "Explain!" He turned around to her, his voice dangerously low and she stepped back, taken aback and shocked into silence.

She had grown used to the _other_ , he wanted _him_ back. The one that was gentle.

Voldemort was on her before she could find her voice, shaking her by the shoulders, demanding her to explain what was going on, where they were and why was there blood on their faces.

She collected herself and not in a smooth way, pushing him away with a jerk that threw him against the side of the wardrobe behind him.

"I don't know!" She told him, raising her voice. Almost screaming "You are the one that got us off that mountain! You are the one that should explain what the hell happened!" she felt her voice go thin as she struggled not to cry.

Voldemort had regained his balance and was looking at her, his back to the window, blocking the light of the late afternoon, making him look menacing and more horrible then he already was.

"What mountain?" He asked, slowly, articulating both words, after seeing her walk around the room and sit on the foot of the bed and stare at the floor, her cheeks smudged red as the fresh tears broke the dried blood and stained her cheeks. "I will not ask you again, Weasley…"

"How can you not remember?" She didn't lift her voice and he had to step closer to hear her speak. "We spent almost two weeks in that forest to reach the mountain and the Goblin King and now you don't remember…" She felt her hearth tighten, she was missing the wizard with whom she had shared all that time. It was like she had lost a friend.

She did not understand why she was doing this. Crying.

"We went… _where_?" She could feel his magic start to expand around him, growing at the same rate his fury did.

"It was your idea," she explained, "how could you forget?" she hated him, both, how could she leave her?

With half a turn and an open hand the wardrobe broke in half and fell to the floor. A taste of what he wanted to do to her but did not dare.

"You thought you are still working for the Borgin & Burkes, Tom." Ginny muttered, she hadn't moved out of her sit, she stood there like a cliff against a stormy winter sea. "I think your mind caught with your look…"

He was on her before she could react, dragging her to the middle of the bed.

"This ends now, Weasley." He said against her ear as he placed a knee between her legs, making them part. "I am done with you playing with m-" His voice getting lower as he pulled her sweater up her head to lock her arms over her head, leaving her in her flannel shirt. "This ends now, I ca-"

"WHAT ARE YOU DOING!?" She screamed at him trying to free her arms at the same time she tried to move back and away from him.

"YOU CAN'T KEEP BENDING ME LIKE THIS!" He shouted, his eyes glowing with a light that didn't came from inside, but from a source only he could see. She started to panic as she understood what he wanted to do.

This was not about some sudden primal urge of subduing her and showing her that he was stronger and better then her, it was the bracelets.

"STOP!" she pleaded, but he couldn't hear, he was too lost to that drive that lingered under the need to touch they shared since the bracelets had said it was time to feel. She was aware of it, she almost succumbed to it, but this was different, this was him starting the ritual that would lock them together, that would make her his wife.

She wanted it, the bracelet said so, but as he undressed her, as he ripped the clothes he couldn't open and freed the skin he burned to touch and that buried the key to stop this madness, she kept her heart on his words in front of the Goblin King.

The only light of hope and sanity she could see and she hold on to it.

" _There is a way._ "

She remembered and if there was a way, they should find it before having to do this.

He turned her on his stomach, pulling her belt until it broke and she screamed in pain, then he started to pull her jeans down, breaking the button in the process and she started to cry, her mind rolling over the same thoughts, over and over again. They had a chance, they should find it, they should try it...

She was not ready.

He stopped when he couldn't ignore the sound of her sobs any more. That was what he told himself, that it was not the sobs, when in fact, it was the sudden wave of despair that came with it.

He rolled from her and laid on his back beside her, covering his eyes with his forearm and breathing deeply, calming down, realizing what he had almost done.

A pinch of a shame he hid under the disguise of frustration. He was not one to lose control like this.

He lowered his arm, pulling his trousers over his hip bones and looked at her. Ginny was still hiding her face in the bed covers, her red hair everywhere, hiding any sight of her face from him.

He could still feel what was going through her, a mix of despair, fear and hopelessness, it was starting to get a grip around his throat, making him feel even more weak then he already did after losing control as he had just done.

Voldemort cold be a murder, he was not ashamed of that title or could he deny he did enjoy playing with others minds, but he had no interest in subduing other this way, specially this way.

There was something in the way and time he was raised.

Maybe.

He still hated her, he hated her more then he hated Harry Potter, who had killed him once. He hated her more then he hated Albus Dumbledore. He hated her more then he hated the orphanage surrounded by war that he had to call a home in the holidays.

Still, he could not blame her for what was going on, no matter how much he wanted.

He was sure she didn't like him either, he had killed her friends, he had killed Harry Potter.

He sighed and rubbed his eyes with both hands.

She was suffering with the curse as much as he was.

"In a way," he started, letting the back of his hand rest on her shoulder, "attending the circumstances, I prefer to be the one to change then you." This made Ginny raise her head and put her hair behind her ear as she raised an eyebrow at him. "I would rather die than have to touch you if you looked the way I did before."

She laughed and burred her face down again, muffing a sound that he had never heard before but that, for some reason, he would like to hear again.

He smiled, as her feelings leaked away from him and the tension lifted from the room. He pulled her to him, stretching to pull the jeans up to her waste and then hold her close, breathing the smell of smoke of her hair.

"What happened?" he asked instead of apologising.

"What is the last thing you remember?" she asked back.

* * *

It was night when Voldemort apparated outside The Burrow with her. He stood behind her as she opened the door and her parents rose in surprise and then moved to shy smiles and expressions of hope that got destroyed the moment she shook her head in a _no_ to their silent question.

They had failed.

She took him upstairs, pointing him to his room and informed him that she was going to take a shower and that dinner would be ready at the usual time so he would have time to clean himself too if he wanted, but when she knocked on his door he opened it looking pristine, even back in the clothes he had brought from the Ministry.

Why would he rather use magic then enjoy the warm water of a shower after all that had happened was beyond her.

Ginny was just happy to be home.

The dinner was a bit awkward as her family realised that it was Lord Voldemort himself that was eating at their table, it became even more awkward when she reached to move his hair from his eyes, running the back of her fingers down his cheek and ask him what he was thinking.

The fact that his reaction was to actually reply to her question made them finally understand how serious the situation was with the bracelets.

"I have been thinking about what you told me," he said between bites of his food. He generally didn't eat so much, but he wasn't exactly human for the past years. "About what I said to the goblin, but I can't for the life on me, remember what it can be."

"I really wish you had told me."

"No, I mean, I really can't remember." He said, cleaning his plate with the bread and cursing the world for being so hungry. "I tried to take the memory out, but I don't have it."

"What do you mean?"

"I really forgot what happened during these last weeks. There is nothing."


	11. Chapter 11

Ginny went early to her room. She told her family she was tired but, in fact, she could not endure the worried looks they were sending her way. They wanted to tell her something, but not with Voldemort sitting beside her. He was absently looking to the living room, with a frown that barely contained the growing bad mood boiling under the young and human face they were still trying to process.

When she left, he followed her, raising mechanically and walking behind her without even looking at them. Completely ignoring them, as if they were not even there.

There was a mix of disconcert with relief. They did not have much to talk with Lord Voldemort.

He entered the guest room where he had stayed some weeks ago, closing the door behind him with a loud and annoyed _bang_.

She did not argue that, she was determined to enjoy some hours of sleep by herself until one of them broke and, half asleep went to look for the other. Resigned, she hoped it was him. The mattress on her bed was better then the one on that other room and she was still tired from their wandering in the mountains.

Ginny never heard him enter her room or felt him crawl in bed with her. However, she was not able to ignore the grumpy voice against her hair in the morning. "Why are you here?" She crocked an eye open, assessing her surroundings. "You are in my bedroom," she rolled to the other side, away from his arms and pulling the covers up. "We do this now, remember? If you are not going to sleep more, go away."

Voldemort sat up, looking around her room, confirming that the space, was definitely not the one where he had fallen asleep the night before. He sighed, annoyed.

"I am not joking, go away if you are going to be a nuisance."

"I do not like the way you are speaking to me." Voldemort stated.

Ginny looked over her shoulder, a single eye peering over the covers, "What are you going to do about it?" He did not replay. "Jerk."

A muscle twitched under his right eye and he looked away, counting to ten. Cursing the liberties some other version of himself and given her.

"Pack your things," he told her, putting his feet on the ground and running his fingers through his hair, "We are going to Hogwarts." He told her, putting what was happening to the side for the time being. Night would come again, he could ask her then.

It was all a question of priorities, choosing what was important in between the craziness. He was nurturing quite a long list of questions and he hadn't be back to his full self for even two full days.

Ginny frowned, turning and raising on her elbow. "For what?"

"There are some books in the library I need to see."

"Really?"

Voldemort did not reply. He stood up and walked to the door, putting his shirt back inside his trousers, and when he opened the door Mrs Weasley was there, flustered, looking at him shock.

He had felt her presence before she even started walking down the stairs from the upper floor, thinking about one of her sons, but the timing had been perfect.

"Oh..." Molly let go, expecting her daughter on the door, not _him_. Not expecting to see _him_ anywhere near the four walls of that bedroom.

"We are going to Hogwarts, Molly." Voldemort stepped around the witch to the hallway. "Help her pack." He ordered before disappearing into his own room.

He sat down on the armchair, tying his boots to the sound of loud voices coming through the wall his room shared with hers.

When did he became so powerful that he forgot how he enjoyed creating these small joys?

He did not let them fight long, he was in a hurry. The sooner he got to Hogwarts the better. He was starting to put together a list of books he wanted to review. There were some titles he was not recalling, but he knew Madam Pince was still around, and she had never failed to help him find the information he was looking for when he was a student.

Even when the information was not exactly something he should be asking her about.

Hopefully, not him or his followers, had never killed anyone she was found off.

They arrived soon after he, fully ready, leaned against her door jamb and glared at both woman. Molly left, avoiding to touch him as she walked out and he smirked at Ginny.

"I wish you had not come back." She told him, closing her suitcase with both their things inside, but he just stared at her.

Her face was red, she looked flustered, she had argued with her mother.

Voldemort did not care about how she felt, so he did not reply.

They arrived at Hogwarts unannounced, making the school fall into a small chaos as Voldemort lead the way to the table in the end of the Great Hall, where Professor Severus Snape stood up to look at him confused.

Voldemort gave him a look of warning when his eyes fell on Ginny, that he was almost dragging by an arm behind him.

Snape, conjuring an extra chair, freed the Director seat to his Master and waited for Ginny to sit down to finally take his place. Fortunately, still to the right. He was always on edge around that wizard, always fearful that he would find out how he felt in regards of the outcome of the war.

He was unpredictable, as he was showing at that very moment.

Lucius was holding the Ministry together, rather well by everyone's he had spoken with on Narcisa's birthday party at their Manor. With their Master gone after Azkaban's being broken in.

None the less, the talks had started to flow by the corridors of the Ministry, spreading to the streets.

Lord Voldemort had disappeared for two weeks after putting a stop to the tumult that Hermione Granger's rescue had caused. He was bleeding and instead of seeking help from his followers in prison, he went to the Leaky Cauldron.

Most people were having trouble believing what the witnesses had said they saw. Voldemort dragging Ginevra Weasley from the stairs that lead to the bedrooms on the upper-floors.

Malfoy had also shared, between a stressed sighed and a glass of firewishky, how he had found Voldemort unconscious in his office. The trouble of trying to move Voldemort unnoticed to St. Mungo's and it not working, tracing down their Master's steps that morning to the Department of Mysteries. Tiberius pleading for them to find Ginevra and take her to him.

But those two weeks…

Snape did not know all the details. He was trusted enough to manage Hogwarts, mostly for his experience there then anything else, but he was no longer part of the main circle of Death Eaters.

His luck was to be friends with Lucius, otherwise, he would be very confused for seeing Voldemort entering the main hall of his school with his old student behind him. Now, he was just worried for her.

If Voldemort choose to be there, at that time of the day, like that, showing all the students – that would, doubtless, write to their parents about what they saw – that he had something going on with Ginny, then he was loosing his control over the situation.

He was showing weakness and it would only contrast with what Lucius was doing as he sat on the Ministry, managing things while Voldemort run around with a woman, ignoring his followers, his work and his future in power.

The students rose in the end of the meal, swearing their oat to Voldemort, this time with him present, and started to leave for classes, mumbling with each other, looking over their shoulders at Voldemort, that they did not recognize and at Ginny, who they knew very well. The other professors did not wait around, they had classes to give, this was something for Snape to deal with.

"See to the accommodations, Weasley." Voldemort told Ginny as he rose from the table, ignoring Snape, and walked away.

Snape raised his eyebrowns at Ginny and helped her to stand, then he took her to a side door that lead to a small room and closed the door behind him.

"Mis-" He was not able to say her name because she had put her arms around him and started to cry.

"You have to help me, Professor," she said between sobs, "I can't handle this much longer."

Awkwardly, he put one arm around her shoulders and pulled her closer to him.

It was not Voldemort the only one losing control.

"Miss Weasley, let me take you to your quarters first." Snape said. They crossed the castle in quiet steps, up the stairs that came around to help the master of the school go where he needed to go.

The room he picked was the last one down the corridor, next to a window with a view to the lake.

There were no paintings in the room, Snape hoped this could give them some privacy.

They sat in front of the fireplace, the small house-elfs working around the room and getting it ready. Once they left, Snape finally asked her what was going on.

She told him everything she could, told him what had happened to Voldemort in the past couple of weeks and where they had been. Ginny showed him her bracelet, asked if he knew anything about, if he new of a potion that could withhold the curse.

Snape could not do much but listen and offer her comfort.

He, honestly, knew nothing that could help her, but he now knew something that could help the world.

He knew what Voldemort's weakness was.

Snape left the room soon after, leaving Ginny to her thoughts.

Voldemort came to her at lunch time, right when her head was starting to hurt from them being apart for so many hours. He puller her to his arms, a hand finding its way under the hem of her shirt, his fingers touching the bare skin on the small of her back.

They had lunch and he went away again, to his library and his books. They did not spoke, when he found something he would let her know. He was only there because he had to.

He went to see her in the middle of the afternoon and before dinner, first to calm the curse down and then to tell her would be joining Snape for dinner. Maybe he could use is help in his research.

She did not wait for him, no reason for doing it.

Ginny knew he would be by her side the next morning.

A couple more days went the same way, there was when he stretched the afternoon, only getting to their quarters after dinner time. She was outside in the balcony, hoping the fresh air would calm her nerves down. Watching through the opening of the curtains to inside the room, she could see him arrive, undressing from his robes and letting them fall to the floor, looking around the room, his cheeks with a smudge of red on them as he tried to spot her.

She grabbed on to the stone under her fingers when his razor blue eyes fell on her. He walked to her, folding the sleeves of his shirt up his arms and sighed in relief from finally seeing her.

He put his arms around her, pulling her close to him. Ginny put his arms around his shoulders, her hand running through his hair.

"That was a bit to much time," she told him, trying to hold his face to look at him, but he did not move from the curve of her neck and she let him stay, just for a moment, just until she felt his lips press against her skin and made her quiver against him. "Don't do that, Tom." She asked, lifting her shoulder to make him move away.

He looked down at her, his lips a thin line.

"What?" She asked, "are you feeling well?"

"I can't find anything." He told her, looking away to the landscape behind her, light by the moonlight and stars.

"You said you knew how to stop this," he walked inside, shaking his head to her words.

"I got rid of those memories long ago."

"What do you mean?"

"I guess I thought knowing about these bracelets was useless." He stopped at the foot of the bed, turning to her with a frown. "I remember most of the things I have lived, sometimes I have to get rid of some."

She stared at him in silence.

"There must have been something else attached to that memory I did not which to remember." He told her. "Tomorrow I am going to Slytherin's library in his Chamber," he pulled her to him again and turned to push her down against the mattress in such a smooth movement she did not react. "Maybe the information we need is there."

He had a knee between her legs and he lowered his weight on her, his hand holding her leg under her skirt, pulling on her tights as he rested his head on her shoulder, his face buried in her neck again.

She holds her breath, her fingers relaxing their grip on his sleeve and the tension lifted from her muscles, just a little, when he did not move more.

"I will come see you more times tomorrow," Voldemort said, breathing heavily, inhaling her scent and feeling himself slipping away to sleep, feeling his redden eyes from reading all day, relax under the shadows of her hair.


	12. Chapter 12

Saying that she slept was an overstatement.

She danced all night long with sleep, turning from one side to the other. Winning a grumpy remark from the sleeping figure on her side, she was never able to achieve that blessed unconsciousness. She was not able to rest.

What kept her awake had degrees of importance, not many, only two, has there were only two things bothering her that moment. On another night, one she already had when they were exploring the Mountains, that had been about what was, now, less important.

Tonight, she was worried about his behaviour. She was had turned what happened when he returned to the room after dinner, then she had turned in that bed. She didn't like the way he had moved and the ease with which he had touched her, putting her down in the bed before she could even think about reacting. Not that she did not have the time to think, but because she was to distracted with the way he was touching her.

He looked towards Tom, that face she knew so well hiding a monster she would rather never cross outside a battlefield, sleeping on his side and facing her. His eyes were moving fast under his eyelids, following whatever he was seeing in his dreams. Looking peacefully and innocent, with a few lines of his teenage years lingering on the high bones of his cheeks and the lightness of his muscles that would disappear with time.

If he planned to age, if he was even able to do so.

She didn't mind him much like this, asleep, despite everything. The problem was when he awakened, his muscles tensing under the stress of what was going on. He seemed to age 20 years in the moment he opened his eyes. He pretended he was okay, he looked undisturbed, but she knew how to read the signs.

She was still trying to understand what was impossible to understand. The way he acted and why she let him act like that.

Not exactly impossible. Ginny lift her arm in the air, the bracelet sliding down her arm. The answer was right there.

She understood, but understanding did not mean that she accepted it. That was the problem in all of this. Accepting. It was clear to her that he was going to fail. She did not want to tell him or even had to share it with him at this point as he was doing his best, but she could see he was going to fail.

She let her arm hid her eyes from the world.

They were already settling in, reluctantly, but they were. She would have to been blind not to see it. This night had been a fine example of exactly that.

Had he been less tired and their stay at Hogwarts would become pointless after that night.

Having their meals together, not even bothering to ask for two rooms because they would awake together. If one of them let their attention down, they would immediately touch the other. Hold their arm, touch their hair, rest a hand on the other's leg under the table.

She was sure he had noticed too. She wondered how he felt about it.

Ginny left the bed as quietly as she could when her back started to hurt, and crossed the room, stopping by the window to look outside. It was still night, hours to go before he would wake up.

Ginny turned around. The outdated wallpaper, the heavy and antiquate furniture. Tom sleeping in the bed. She couldn't be in that room anymore. It was starting to make her feel claustrophobic.

She walked into the kitchen, asking for coffee to the house elfs that were already up, preparing the ingredients for the day's meals. She sat there, looking at them move around, running from one side to the other.

When she was done, she left behind their odd, cursed behaviour and moved on to other odd details of her life as she walked into the second thing that was bothering her that night.

Up the moving stairs, down the hole into the bones.

The Basilisk was still there. Dead. Yellowed bones resting where the created had been killed by Harry so many years ago. Just nothingness and empty darkness where its petrifying eyes used to be.

Slowly, she walked around the skeleton, keeping herself as near the columns as possible and almost tripping on Salazar Slytherin's statue's foot. She looked up and leant her head against the cold stone for a moment.

Harry.

She continued to walk, clean the tears from her eyes and giving a deep breath.

He had not been dead for three months and she barely thought about him anymore. In fact, she couldn't remember the last time she had done it. She reached to her collarbone, looking for the necklace Harry had given her. It had a small pendant, a small star that she always liked to hold.

She couldn't remember when she had taken it off.

Ginny sat down in a broken column that had fallen during the battle between Harry and the Horcrux, admiring the chamber around her.

She couldn't remember being here.

There were fragments of memories that had pierced through the possessions. Where the Chamber was, the words to open it, walking down hallways, but not much more.

She still felt grateful she could not remember.

She would rather forget all the other interactions with him that year.

She hated him, that was how she felt in relation to him. No amount of goblin bracelets were going to change that.

It was a feeling that run too deep in her.

She had liked him when she was 11 years old when she had not been obsessed with Harry. Writing him bad Valentine's Day poems, hiding away but hoping he would see her. Seeing Tom for the first time had changed the balance on that, but soon after, her feelings for the boy in the diary became a constant fight between wanting to please him and being afraid of him.

After what happened in that Chamber, what she was looking at was a perfect metaphor for the way she felt. The Chamber still existed, its monster was still there, bones waiting to turn dust and she was there, forced to go there again when she would rather be somewhere else entirely.

Everything was there, but it was dead, it didn't remember her.

It was the worst part of the Bracelets, forcing her to be with a despicable man that was worth no one's time.

She was being forced into a relationship with her abuser. With a wizard that had never done anything good and was known to be incapable of love.

What life was she going to have with him?

She doubted he would abandon what he had conquered for her. To move with her to a quiet house, help her make dinner and kiss her goodnight.

What if they had children?

She gave a deep breath and rolled her eyes. That was going to deep. She cleaned her tears and looked down. That was definitely too deep.

He was not Harry, he was barely human and there was not any amount of weird magic that those bracelets could conjure, that was going to change who he was inside or the way the felt about any of this.

"How did you got here?" Ginny jumped to the sound of his voice. Voldemort had just entered the Chamber and was not looking impressed with seeing her there.

"Did you also erased your memories of what you did to me in this place?" that made him raise an eyebrow at her. "If you remembered, you would not ask me that stupid question."

In retrospective, it might not have been the smarter thing to say. A muscle twisted under his eye.

"I don't share memories with my Horcruxes, Weasley." He finally said, putting his hands inside his pockets.

"If your Diary had killed me, would you be 16 after becoming alive?" she asked, a bit curious. He had made most of his Horcruxes before he was even 25 years old.

"It's complicated," he started to walk towards her, adjusting his robes around his chest. "Let's go to the library."

"Aren't you even curious to know what happened?" Ginny didn't move from her sitting place and he rested against the column as well, looking at what remained of his Basilisk.

"I-" he made a small pause to choose the next words, staring at what remained of his Basilisk, a sense of content spreading as he remembered the year he had found the serpent.

It had not been an easy time, balancing school work with… this. Then what happened in the summer. Returning for the 7th year, after all, that had not been easy, but choosing between the war that was destroying the world, the attack Grindelwald was leading in the wizard society and returning to Hogwarts, had been quite easy.

"I don't really care, to be honest." Ginny looked away. "I don't mutter over my failed plans." He waved his hand towards the destruction in front of them. "If anything..." he touched her cheek, "I wish the Diary had done its job properly." Ginny's eyes opened wide in surprise and she gasped. That was cruel of him to say. "If you had died, we wouldn't be in this situation and instead of dragging me down, you would actually be useful."

Ginny stared at him, her mouth slightly open, watching him walk away and disappear between two ruined columns. She collected herself and run after him, boiling inside and ready to tell him some things he was not going to like to hear.

When she caught up with him, he was standing under a door, resting his shoulder against the jamb. The door was not completely open, blocking whatever he was seeing inside, whatever had grounded him to the floor.

"Tom?" He didn't reply or even acknowledge that he had heard her. Ginny stepped closer, carefully keeping some distance from him because his robes were starting to move around his was never a good sign. She peered inside, over his shoulder, and saw that Slytherin's library had been burned down.

The smell of the fire, of burned furniture, parchments and books were still intense. A magical fire, self-contained in one room. Very well targeted on its intentions and goals.

Very recent.

Voldemort turned and Ginny gave a step back. He was furious, completely and absolutely furious. His eyes were red and he was showing his teeth like some feral animal, ready to kill whatever crossed his way.

Before he could even give the second step Ginny was pressing him against the wall beside the door. Pressing her body against his, her hands beside his torso, holding his robes against the stones behind him.

She was not strong, but he couldn't hurt her, it did not make a difference.

"Calm down, Tom." She told him, her forehead, resting against his cheek. She heard him give a strangled laugh, finding her words amusing. "I am not letting you go anywhere like this."

"Don't you understand what this means?" He asked between his closed teeth. She could feel the tension of his jaw against her closed eyes, how it had barely moved for him to speak, but she did not bulge, she was not going to let him go out of that Chamber in that state of rage, into a school full of children.

"You have to calm down." She told him again.

"I am fucking calm." He grabbed her shoulders, losing his patience, quickly letting her go when he felt, on his own shoulders, the strength of his grip on her. A reminder that he could not curse her as he wanted to do.

"I think you should go to the library," she told him, trying to not show him how anxious she was feeling, "act like you don't know what happened here." She tried to tell him, make him do _something_ , but she just heard herself sound stupid.

She leant back enough to look up at him, caressed his face and moved his hair out of his eyes.

"You are always so controlled, don't do anything rushed," She felt his hands find her skin of her back, light and soft, of someone that had lift nothing heavier in his life than a book. "Please."

His iris were still blood red when he closed his eyes when she pressed her lips to his in a kiss. It was the first kiss since that first day when she waited for him to come to her. There couldn't be a worse moment to break this wall. She knew they shouldn't, and was sure he was probably thinking the same but… she deepened the kiss, exploring his mouth.

He tasted good.

She bit his lip, taking a sound from the back of his throat that she had never heard him make and made her crave more.

He moved his face away.

"I am sorry," Ginny touched her lips and cleared and throat, "I-" He pushed her away and walked, leaving her behind.

"Tom!" she called him.

"I will find a way!" he shoot back.

Ginny put her hair behind her shoulder and sighed. He should have told her how to break the Bracelets' curse in the mountains. She had been feeling guilty about it since then. If she had not been so pissed at him when they were imprisoned, she would have thought about asking.

She shook her head, dismissing those thoughts. There was no way she would have known that he would wake back to his old self. Where he had erased all the relevant memories to their situation.

Fucking all.

How could someone consciously remove a memory from their mind and intentionally destroy it?

How?

She walked inside the library, wand in front of her lighting her way. No one was supposed to know what Voldemort was looking for in the school. There was no one that was supposed to know about where that Chamber was.

She stepped back out of the burned library and started to run. She was wrong. There was only one person there that knew besides them, and she was pretty sure that both her and Voldemort had spoken with him about what they were doing there.

Severus Snape knew exactly what they were trying to find.

When she reached the stairs she was engulfed in the chaos of the panicked students running and screaming. Ginny guessed that Voldemort had reached the same conclusion than her and was already down on the matter. She ran down the stairs as fast as she cold, dodging the students running in the opposite direction.

The closer Ginny got, the louder were Snape's screams.

When she got to them, Snape was a bloody mess over the Persian carpet.

Ginny sat down, looking at the scene in front of her in an almost numb horror. The image of Snape's twisted body slowly printing itself on her mind.

"This filthy half-blood," Voldemort walked to her, cleaning the blood from his face with his sleeve, "was working in getting you kidnapped." He told her, but Ginny did not look at him, her eyes fixed on what he had done. "Are you listening?"

"Why did you-" she struggled to her feet.

" _I just told you_!" He snapped, then gave a deep breath, remembering that he needed to be patient and calm with her. "I need to go to the Ministry. We have nothing else to do here." He grabbed her arm and dragged her to Snape's office to use the fireplace. They entered the hallway where the statue that guarded the office's door was and Voldemort pulled her to him and put his arm around her shoulders.

"I need you to stop feeling so miserable," He muttered, his lips almost touching her hair. "or I won't be able to focus as well as I should when I find Lucius."

"Be free to kill him, I don't really care about what you do to him." She told him.

Voldemort let his thumb run down her neck, evaluating her. She slapped her hand away, "He is the one that put me in this situation to begin with…" They reached the statue and entered the office, stopping in front of the fireplace. He told her the address where she should go and stay way from problems and watched her disappear in the emerald flames.

His house, the Minister's house, there wasn't a safer a place he could think of to send her.

When it was his turn, he went straight to his office and did not give Lucius Malfoy time to look at him before making him fly from his chair.

He didn't kill Lucius, but Narcissa had a bit of work to do during the next days to ensure her husband's comfort.

Nevertheless, Voldemort was going home more tranquil. His followers were not conspiring to remove him from power and a feeling of relief seemed to fall on the Ministry with his return.

Despite everything, politics never changed, they did not like the unknown.

He was feeling anxious, he had gone to have lunch with Ginny and do the usual, annoying thing of touching her to calm things down, but he was stretching the afternoon too much. He still had things to do, so he was looking forward to a quick dinner and return.

First thing in the morning he was having a meeting with Tiberius, the old wizard had been trying to reach him for days. He was still trying to understand why haven't been able to. He also had things to speak with him.

He was very concerned with how things were going, how long he still had to put a stop to the curse.

Voldemort was about to reach his office, absently reading the report on his hand, when he was stopped by an Auror.

"I am sorry Sir, we have a situation in our ward and could use your help." The young wizard said with a nervous smile.

Voldemort frowned at him, closing the report and putting it under his arm. As he tried to evaluate what he had just been told. In what reality they would send a boy to ask him for help.

Suddenly, a feeling of dread and panic invaded him. The report fell to the ground as he reached to the wall to catch his balance.

He looked up at the other wizard and he had his wand out.

That was the last thing he saw.

Someone had gotten to her.

* * *

 **A/N** Thank you very much for all the lovely comments in the previous chapter. I am sorry I didn't reply. They were my motivation to finish the last couple of chapters last weekend. We are almost done, only some editing left to do.


	13. Chapter 13

Everything hurt.

Everything.

And she couldn't see.

 _Great._ She thought, falling into a terrible mood somewhere between the aching and the soreness and the pain that spread from her ribs every time she took a breath.

Cleaning her eyes with the back of her hand she sat up as high as she was able. Death Eaters were standing around her, and her face was covered in blood.

Ginny cleaned her face with rushed strokes, trying to feel a bruise, a cut, something that was not the pain of the Bracelets being away from each other manifesting itself on them. Pretending that it was them that were in need of each other. Her fingers couldn't find anything, not even the smallest cut.

He would better hurry the fuck up.

"Well, well," the Death Eater sitting on a chair to her right started, "we were starting to think you would die of blood loss before we would have a chance to speak with you." Ginny ignored him, letting herself lay on the ground again, breathless from the effort of hoping it was not the bracelets making her bleed. "That would be very inconvenient to our plans. Why are you even bleeding? Is it part of the spell that bonds you with our beloved Minister?"

She closed her eyes, feeling her cheeks warm, tears of blood running down her face again.

The Death Eater that seemed to be in charge exchanged some words with another man, about how things were going in the Ministry and she seemed to recognise his voice, but was not sure.

She guessed they were going to try to use her against Voldemort. She didn't mind, she did not like him enough to desire him anything good. This was actually a good plan, but if they were covering up their identities, pretending to be Death Eaters, they were probably willing to go the extra mile.

Or he obeyed or he was gone. Probably gone, by making her gone first. She guessed she was going to be a much easier to kill them him.

She was not sure how she felt about that part, but if he didn't come soon, it wouldn't make a difference the way she would go.

The spell that had put her unconscious was wearing off and she opened her eyes again.

The Death Eater rose from his chair and walked to her, kneeling to see her better. "We have all been quite curious about what is exactly going on here." He said, touching her face lightly. "Did he saw something on you and wants you to fall in love with him?" He crooked his head, she couldn't see her eyes, covered by the mask. "Is there really a curse?" He pulled her hand, touching the bracelet around her wrist.

"I am sorry to break your romantic dreams..." Ginny took back her hand, raising on her elbow. "It is a curse." She gave him an annoyed smile. "No love or aspirations to leave the world behind to have children and live in a cottage."

He laughed at the image of Voldemort surrounded by children. "You spoke about it?" He asked, amused.

"We are trying not too." That made him laugh again.

"My friends in the Ministry tell me that you-know-who is a similar state to you," She could sense he was smiling under the mask, "crying blood for almost half an hour. I suppose you have not been trying hard enough to break the curse."

"We were almost killed by Goblins, doesn't that count for something?" She asked him, cleaning her face again.

"Barely." He got up to his feet and stepped back. "We have been waiting for you to wake up to check a small theory of mine." He waved and the Death Eaters opened a door hidden away behind a tapestry. Through it, a cage levitated to the room, slow and steady, with a drugged, very large snake inside.

Nagini was barely able to lift its head from the cage, drowsily looking from one side to the other, confused and scared. Despite being smart, it was just a serpent, an animal that tended to be more scared of humans than the contrary. Without her Master, she was lost.

The cage stopped in the middle of the room, in front of her. One moment the serpent was inside its prison, the next it was floating in the air and in the other it had lost its head.

The Death Eater caught the head with the point of Gryffindor's sword that he used to decapitate the animal, and looked down at her. "Did you felt this?" He asked, bending down to have a good look at her. "Nothing?" He asked when she continued to stare at him. "Bring me the Cup." He requested, putting his foot on Nagini's head to get his sword back.

In a fluid movement he cut part of the Cup, the ghostly figure Tom Riddle appeared over it, a ray of light cutting him on the diagonal, from his shoulders to his middle. The figure didn't react, simply disappearing into the air.

"Interesting what this one did," He said to the wizards around him. "I wonder if the other ones will give us a show too."

"You found his Horcruxes?" She managed to say, surprised.

"Not an easy job, let me tell you. We were curious to see if you could feel their destruction, but it looks like he can't." He told her, disappointed. "Not many more to go, just the Locket and the Diadem." He took the diadem from his robes and looked at it, tilting his head. "Here, hold it." She put it on her hair. "Looks nice."

He looked down at her, smiling behind his mask.

"How do you feel about it?" He asked. "Those this upset you?"

"Not at all." She let herself fall to the ground again, covering her eyes with her arm. "I would cheer if I was not in pain."

"Really?" That surprised him. "You don't care?"

"You have my entire support to use me to bring him down," Ginny muttered.

"You are joking." He looked around the room, everyone was taken aback by her words.

"I told you, we are cursed," she smiled without looking at him, "not in love."

"That is something I was not expecting to hear."

"I am into much pain to care about your expectations." She growled, turning to her side, her back to the Death Eater. "You are all dead when he gets here."

"What makes you think he will be able to get here?" He turned around, waving to the wizards around him. "These are just some of man guarding you, some that believe we can bring that madman to the ground!"

"He will find a way. A mountain full of Goblins was not able to stop him, you are not going to even be able to stand a chance." She cleaned her eyes again and looked over his shoulder, a warning in her bloodied eyes that made his skin crawl.

There was more to it then he knew. Clearly.

The idea had come from Snape. He had known what they should do the moment Voldemort and Ginny had arrived at Hogwarts. Snape wrote to a couple of people, both among the Death Eaters as well as the Order of the Phoenix, being careful to keep the subject away from Molly Weasley.

She would not like what he was thinking to do with her daughter, but he had hoped she would, one day when things were better and the world less cruel, understand.

Fortune had provided them with a one in a lifetime opportunity to control Voldemort, to make him bend to what needed to be done or finish him altogether if he decided to disagree with them.

Snape made sure to contact the right people, the ones unhappy with the situation, that wanted the world as it was before, not use Voldemort to do something else, to pursue their one ideals of power in a less violent way.

He had slowly figured it out and was quick in sharing the details with his accomplices. How Lord Voldemort and Ginevra Weasley were sharing one room and he was having all his meals with her. He had not dared ask the librarian what he was looking for, or go through her records to see what books he was checking out, crazy as that woman was with her books and her records, she would no if anyone touched it. But as the Director of that school, the house elves owned him their full obedience and he took full advantage of it.

He called one of them, the smallest that worked in the kitchens, and told him to stay behind after leaving their meals in the room. To stand in a corner, invisible and quiet to wait and see.

Later at night, they would meet in the dungeons, away from the portraits as there were many important figures around the castle that couldn't be more proud of that old student's work. The minimum thing, and Voldemort would know he was being spied on.

The small elf told him about how they would, some times, sit in the floor with e sigh, her legs laced with his as they ate and spoke smoothly to each other. Voldemort avoiding to tell her how he was doing in the library, preferring to ask her about her family.

When they were done, she would hold his ankle under his trousers and pull him to a hug. He would go away after that and leave her to collect the dishes from the floor.

The small elf was there when Voldemort said he was going into Slytherin's Chamber. Snape had sent him there to watch, after his Master opted for having dinner with him instead of the red haired girl he had not seen since the first day they arrived.

Snape didn't waste time, bringing a small painting of fruit and flowers with him, he forcer Salazar Slyherin himself to say the words that would open the Chamber, he found the library and put it on fire.

That Molly Weasley forgave him for that.

But Molly never had a chance to tell him what she thought about what he did to his daughter.

* * *

Voldemort came to his senses in a jail cell of the Auror's ward.

He was laying on his stomach, the side of his face that rested against the floor was warm and wet.

Everything hurt.

He pulled himself to sit against the wall and cleaned his face for the best of his abilities, drenching the sleeves of his coat with the blood that had been running from his face.

Annoyed, he remembered that he never asked about the details of how they escaped the Goblins. Maybe it was time to review his decision to not prioritise his failed plans.

He looked outside, to the room full of Aurors. They were starting to notice he had awaken, some left, others smirked at him. None had any idea of what they had done.

With effort, he got to his feet and hold the bars of the door that separate him from them.

They should be crazy to think this was enough to keep them safe from him.

Slowly, he regained focus, he started to feel furious, tricked.

He was furious with them, for letting this happen, he expected better of his followers. He offered protection and expected protection. Still, somehow, the men he left to guard her and not be enough to ensure her safety.

Unless they were the ones behind kidnapping her.

He was particularly furious with her, for somehow, becoming his weakness. For being useless and not being able to protect herself. Failing meant they both were put into danger.

He suddenly lost the strength of his legs, falling to the ground against the bars. A sensation of dread falling over him, consuming from the inside. He knew the feeling, he had felt it before and it was with some strength that he keep the growl that threatened to leave his throat to himself.

They had killed Nagini, his Horcrux was gone.

He wondered if she could feel the pain of a part of his soul dying.

He doubted, maybe after their souls were bounded. Voldemort pressed his forehead to the cold iron of the door he hold. If they didn't kill her first.

If they didn't die first from the lack of closeness, he corrected.

Would that actually be that bad?

It would take care of the nonsense of being bound to the girl.

He could return, he had more Horcruxes.

The feeling of losing another Horcrux made his decision for him. They had found another piece of his soul. He was not going to risk having them destroy what had been so hard for him to create.

He would not die today.

With difficulty he rose again. Closing his eyes, cleaning his face again, he felt the magic around him. Breathing in, breathing out and the door exploded from its hinges and flew across the room, landing on top of some inattentive Aurors.

He let himself loose to what the Bracelet around his wrist demanded. It was indifferent at this point, their goal was the same. It even made him more powerful, fighting to recover what was rightfully his.

He didn't spare anyone that crossed his path. Being careful enough to leave as much Aurors alive as possible. He needed them when he came back.

The Death Eaters, only in appearance as he could not feel his mark on any of them, were ready for him when he finally appeared in the door of the library.

He crossed a look with Ginny, she was sitting on the floor, her face bathed in red and Ravenclaw's Diadem rested on her hair. She radiated. He could sense her magic synchronising with his, he could almost hear her hearth fall in place with his, he could feel the lust she was feeling from finally being in the same place as he.

He hurt.

She hurt.

They couldn't take the pain much longer.

The Bracelets started to burn on their skin.

He bit his lip to hid the smile from his mouth and then he went in.

Wand-less, Ginny hid away as he cleared the path to reach her.


	14. Chapter 14

When the house finally went quiet, the screams and running stopped and ceased, she opened her eyes, the first thing she saw was the face of her old supervisor. Light, curly brown hair that he always liked to let grow until his wife pleaded for him to cut, blue eyes frozen, unfocused, looking at her without actually looking.

It made her skin crawl. He had a child.

He seemed to be, somehow, blaming her for something she was not guilty of.

She scratched her cheek, the dry blood itched uncomfortably. The blood had stopped running when Voldemort had come around to kiss her before going after the runners.

A quick kiss holding the promise that he was going to be back, she telling him to hurry and that they had to end it that day.

Ginny crossed the room, pulling his diadem from her head, stopping to untangle it from her red hair with an annoyed sigh, and walked down the hallway.

She knew exactly where he was, today she would be able to pinpoint him on a map, even if he was hiding inside a cave in the depths of Earth. She could feel he was walking to her, walking up the stairs in the bottom of the hallway.

She readied herself, every muscle of her body tensing. She was scared and her breathing was starting to grow faster.

He had stopped at the top of the stairs, sitting down. She expected to see him grinning at her, triumphant, an aura of smug glory around him. It couldn't be more different. His head was bent, his hand rested on the back of his neck. He was as tense as her.

Ginny sat beside him, resting her arms on her knees. "I think this is yours." She passed the Diadem to him and he gave her a small smile.

"Thank you." He hold the Diadem with both hands for a moment, the light reflecting on the metal, pale and cold, enclosing a piece of himself. "I found the locket as well." The chain hanged from his neck, the locket dandling free in front of his chest.

They stayed in silence, just there, enjoying their last moment of freedom. A veil of sadness lingered over them, disappointment and hopelessness. Ginny wished she had been wrong, that somehow, they could have done something to prevent this.

She wished she could have helped more, but if one of the brightest wizards to live in the century could not help them, she, a Quidditch player turned Auror, could do even less.

Bonded. Mated to Lord Voldemort. It was going to break her mother's hearth when she found out they had not been able to stop the Bracelet's spell.

She rose just enough to turn and kneel beside him, putting her hand on his shoulder. It was time.

At least, from now on, she could protect her family. Her suffering was his suffering, maybe she could change him. She moved his hair from his face, his cheeks were as stained as hers but she couldn't actually read what was going through his cold blue eyes. There was still a bit of red here and there, remembering her of who was actually under her touch.

She felt grateful that the Bracelets had changed him, she would not like to have to touch what the body he took from that cauldron so many years ago. White skin, more bones then muscles, she was sure his touch would be cold. With no lips to kiss, he would bite her until she was gone.

He sighed, and put the Diadem on the step below his legs.

It was time.

There was nothing else they could do. He could feel their magic interlocking, bonding them together forever and ever.

He turned to face her. There was nothing he wanted more then to touch her, that was true, feel her skin against his, feel her lips, but there was something to be said before.

There was more to this, so much more then maybe she was realising.

Bonded wizards tended to not outlive their partner for very long, How was her mortality going to affect him after this? How was he going to protect himself now? If someone took her and killed her, he would die the same instant.

He had never looked into any of this, he never planned to bond with a witch.

Tom pulled Ginny to him and kissed her, mechanically, exactly the opposite of what he wanted to. She leaned back and he could feel her restrain.

"I never hated you more." She muttered, looking away to the bottom of the stairs a grim on her face.

* * *

Voldemort run his fingers through his hair, trying to put the wet tresses away from his face. Beside him, Ginny was playing with the Bracelets, making them turn in her fingers.

They were sitting in the steps of the attic. He had taken her there, away from the death that he had spread on the floors bellow to reach her. The bond had demanded to be consummated and it didn't had not been quite there during it, he could say she was not comfortable in that house, but they didn't had anywhere else to go.

Once they got back to London, things would not stop for a while.

His thoughts ran wild, as he measured his options. What do next? How to regain absolute control of the Ministry after his absence? How to use his bond with the Weasley girls to his advantage? How to protect her so that he would not get hurt with her? What to do with her?

"Ups..." She said when one of the bracelets went loose and fell down the stairs, jumping down from a step to the other and to the other, stopping when it hit the wall and taking his thoughts with down with it, the smidge of anxiety that was raising on his chest.

Bonded to a girl a quarter his age, nothing but a child compared with him, with his youth looks hiding his almost eighty years old.

Both looked at it roll down, in silence and a hint of awkwardness.

"I will never love you." She told him, getting up to go get the bracelet. Turning around with disdain on her face to look at him. She had told him that four times since they had finished the bonding ritual.

"Hmm?" He looked at her with a frown and rolled his eyes, his thoughts had been somewhere between the way the dress fitted around her waist and what he needed to do next. "Weasley, the only thing I want from you, is for you to not be in my way." He got up as well, walking down the stair to meet her, finally deciding what to do. "I need to go back to the Ministry," he put his hand on her lower back, pulling her along with him down the steps. "Remember," he stopped, and bopped her nose with the tip of his index, a smirk on his lips, "you are now Lord Voldemort's wife."

Her eyes opened in surprise and she gasped, the realization of her status catching up with her. She knew, of course she knew, but it was completely different to hear it from him. Ginny felt her legs go weak and he pressed her closer to him.

"Try to act accordingly."

* * *

 **THE END**


End file.
